Transcripts For CNNW The Situation Room 20140522 : vimarsana

CNNW The Situation Room May 22, 2014

Breaking news. Severe weather, a Tornado Warning that actually here in the washington d. C. Area. Millions are being affected. Chad myers is standing by in the Severe Weather center with the breaking details. What is going on, chad . Three separate Tornado Warnings right now, wolf, for the d. C. Area and also down to fredericksburg and richmond. There is d. C. Proper fairly in the clear. I dont see anything in the west yet. Storms are moving from the northwest. That would be cedar hurst right there, moving south of aannapolis, shady side. A brandnew Tornado Warning farther to the south just popped up right here. Were talking about virginia. This right here would be the chesapeake. Heres port royal. This storm right there moving towards Colonial Beach and maybe far south, if it keeps going, towards hampton roads. Thats the stuff in the east. Believe it or not, theres more stuff out there and another storm for denver. A Tornado Warning earlier. Its now a warning and its taking the exact same track as the storm took in denver yesterday, wolf. This is not a rural area here in the washington, d. C. , metro area. Chad, as you well know, there are a lot of folks out there that are in the bullseye. No question about it. As i saw it coming across pg county and over buoy with hail and annapolis, i lived right there for a very long time. I know this area very well. Just over the bridge, south of the bay bridge and now into this probably if it keeps going, ill call it the salisbury maryland area. Well see if it holds together. Wolf . There are a lot of people in the entire bay area. A lot of folks potentially could be impacted. Any words of advice for folks who may be watching us right now . I know youre on the Eastern Shore. Youre going to say, i want to look at it. Please dont look at these storms. Go inside, stay inside away from windows. These are not f5 toerprnadoes t hit moore, oklahoma. But they can still hit your house and hit it with hail. That would break the window if you were sitting there trying to look at it. Stay inside, get the pets inside, the kids inside, car inside. It will pass in 15 minutes. Give it 15 minutes and be safe. Chad, well get back to you but first of all, tell our viewers where you are. Were in aurora. There is a storm approaching and in the last 15 minutes its weakening. There was a wall cloud and you could clearly see it but there is quartersize hail downtown and it replaces the Tornado Warning and coming out of the north side theres a tornado, an actual storm has increased significantly over the last 15 minutes. But south of denver and north of denver until later on this evening. And the tornadoes that you were telling us about yesterday in the greater denver area, they were pretty significant, werent they . Well, there were a couple significant of the airport south of dia and then also north of the area is where most of the tornadoes were. There was hail damage. Jetliners saw significant hail damage to the wings and to the planes. They were grounded and inspections were done today as well as tens and thousands of cars have major hail damage on the northeast side of denver as well as the airport. They had to bring out plows. To plow the streets and the area clear of 4 to 8 feet of hail. A lot of damage. The storms are just now getting under way and we expect more Severe Weather as the day rolls on. A lost people impacted in the denver area. Chad myers, you have a question for jeff. Go ahead. Here is aurora, colorado, right here. Eventually on i70 and moving to the east as this storm tracks up towards the northeast here is going to take a very similar track. Did you go yesterday or even today and look at the damage from yesterdays tornadoes . We did go by that area and there were a dozen telephone poles down and not a lot of damage, like i said, rural areas. The big story was the hail damage. Houses on the northeast side of aurora, a lot of houses had considerable hail damage and a number of them had holes and roof damage. Homes as well as cars on the northeast side of denver yesterday. Jeff, be safe. This thing could recycle any time. Jeff piotrowski, well stay in touch with you. Chad, i want to go back to the d. C. Area. These are pictures courtesy of our affiliate wjz. It looks calm out there but that could be deceiving. Well, it is. They are flying off to the east. This is the shoreline. This is the western shore. We call the Eastern Shore of the chesapeake on the other side near madison and cambridge and lincoln and bucktown. But this storm, i believe, is probably even getting more dangerous than it was an hour ago. We have this storm right there and its going to travel across the chesapeake, maybe even as a waterspout and across the Eastern Shore. 10, 15 miles south of where the bay bridge hits the other side, hits the Eastern Shore, i need you taking cover right now because we still have that signature there. The rotation, you can see it on the graphic right there. Even though that camera didnt see rotation, didnt see a tornado, the tornado could be in the sky, in the air, in the cloud waiting to drop down. That happens a lot, especially now. There is no there is no geography here in this water. Theres no topography to slow the storms down and storms can spin up quicker as soon as the waterspout makes landfall, and then there is damage on the Eastern Shore. Why is it, chad, that so often we see the Severe Weather developing late afternoon, early evening . Well, because the air is hot. You just take the little handle and put the hot air into the hot air balloon and the balloon rises. The bubbling air goes up into the sky and then runs into a cold layer above us and it just keeps going up and up and up. It can go 30, 40,000 feet and then they can rotate. These storms have been moving at a very strange direction today. They have been moving almost from the northwest to the southeast. And that tells me theres more shear in the atmosphere. Any big storm that is all by itself, that one there, that one there, that one there, not competing with other moisture can rotate and produce a tornado at any time. Its the heat of the day that makes them go during the day. Its the cool of the night that makes them calm down because the air doesnt want to rise at night. It actually sinks. For folks in the d. C. metro area, with the Tornado Warnings popping up, people should take shelter. I see another one here. This is another place that i used to live. Im going to see if i can get to that storm right there. Metro d. C. , baltimore, youre okay. Trying to move this year to see if i can move the camera and slide this up and down. Here is richmond proper, the south side right down towards midlothian. My fingers are nice and hot because im so worked up over the storms. D. C. , youre in the clear. James river, here 200,000 iphone here. Theres the storm for richmond down towards the south side and rico county, youre going to be in the clear. You have a Tornado Warning for you in lothian. You need to be taking cover in richmond, virginia. Wolf . Chad myers, thank you. Well get back to you. Stay with us. Theres also other Important News were following. Scenes of slaughter as ukrainian troops are ambushed in the prorussian separatist area. Well take you there live. Also, one of the nbas most out spoken owners, mark cuban, suggests that Donald Sterling isnt the only person out there who may be considered a bigot. I missed you, too. Ou. Hi buddy. Mom awesome dad i missed you. Oh. Daddy. 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Hurry in for memorial day weekend savings. All beds are on sale, starting at just 649. 99. Know better sleep with sleep number. Monitoring the breaking news, a tornadoes warning here in the washington, d. C. , metro area and also in denver, colorado. Were going to stay on top of this story. Much more coming up. There is other Important News i want to get to. There are fresh and new information about the veterans forced to wait months for treatment. The Veterans Affairs secretary Eric Shinseki was up on capitol hill today and says he has not offered to resign. Our Senior Investigative correspondent drew griffin was the first to expose so much of the scandal at a v. A. Facility in phoenix. Hes there. Hes got more. Hes there with the very latest. What do you know right now, drew . Reporter right now at this hour, wolf, rob nabors, president Obamas White House deputy is speaking and meeting with the phoenix v. A. Nabors toured that hospital to talk with medical providers and i hope to meet with some of the whistle blowers and sources that we have inside the hospital who are giving us information about the deplorable wait times, including dr. Katherine mitchell. I want you to hear what she told us. She heads the clinic and said recently as much as three weeks ago, veterans who are literally coming home from war, just separated from the service, are having to wait in these lines for doctors appointments like everybody else. Our troops coming back from war now separated from service who are coming to the phoenix v. A. For followup care for war injuries. Correct. Are being put on a waiting list and forced to wait six to ten months . Yes, or longer. Reporter youre kidding me. No. Its the same as everybody. Everybody is made to wait. Reporter thats now . Thats happenings now . Yes. Reporter Katherine Mitchell reported that to the office of Inspector General months and months ago. Still, the practice continued to as much as three weeks ago until the investigation began there. Wolf. Drew, stand by, the chair hand of the House Committee is here and he says this is just the tip of the iceberg. He said his panel was stood up by congressman jeff is here of florida as well as Gloria Borger and Doug Brinkley is with us as well. You hear a story like that that vets coming home from iraq and afghanistan, they need treatment. They have to wait for months to get treatment at a hospital in phoenix . Are you shocked . Its totally unacceptable. These are individuals who put their lives on the line. And people who have secret waiting lists, it borders on criminal. Some people like senator blumenthal wants the fbi to investigate. They are waiting for more information. Are you saying that the fbi needs to get involved, looking at potential criminal violations . Any time you manipulate numbers at the federal level, especially numbers that affect that,ed fbi should get involved. You had a hearing and you were expecting top v. A. Officials to come in and testify. Tell us what happened. We have been trying to get information from the v. A. We subpoenaed them two weeks ago today. We told them we needed particular information. They have been less than forthcoming with that information. Last night at 2 30 in the morning we got 3,000 emails from them in the dark of night. We asked them why it is taking so long. We got a letter back saying you cant come because you asked us 15 hours ahead of time. The General Council said he would come to the hill tonight at 4 00. I canceled my flight home so i could be here for a brief. We called him and said, youre welcome to come up for the brief but only if its open to the public and the press can be there. We waited all day long. We called nine times for them to tell us whether or not they were going to come and he never came. We got a call at a quarter to 4 00 from three low level staffers who basically said he didnt want to brief members of congress. He wanted to brief the staff and not in front of the press. Should is there anything that the president can do to say to them we want you to be forthcoming . He spoke about congressional oversight. Can the president say i think you ought to go to the hill . Can he say that . The secretary has been to the hill. On the senate side before Bernie Sanders but i take it he hasnt yet come before your committee . No. And after seeing him testify in front of the senate, i dont think he needs to come to the house because he cant say very much. What more can he do that hes not doing . The president should order the people of the department of Veterans Affairs to do their job and that is to provide the health care that is supposed to be given to the veterans and also to cooperate with congress and they just are not doing that. And let me ask you, youve looked at a lot of documentation. Have you referred what you have seen to the department of justice for further investigation . No. At this point what we have done is given all of the information and we continue to do so, including parts of the information that was provided to us last night and constant calls and emails from whistle blowers and i have already said that the office of Inspector General is about to be overwhelmed with what is going on out there. They are capable of doing a normal investigation but were talking about one that inco encompasses the entire v. A. System. Doug, you started a lot of american president s. Take a step back. Give us a big picture. Well, hes trying to be judicious about it and hes trying to be very cautious. The president has got to up the game a little bit here. The public is angry. This has been a long problem. Its not just president obamas problem with the v. A. But i think the president needs to get a little bit tougher. All president s like to say, the buck stops here. The buck has to stop at president obama on this and i think the public is demanding answers faster than perhaps the white house wants to provide it this time. Congressman, you stopped short of saying that secretary shinseki should leave. No. Because i know the secretary very well. I think hes an honorable man. However, i consistently have said that his people have not serving him very well. They are not giving him accurate numbers so they can make the decisions necessary. So ive decided to wait until they have finished their report but i will tell you this, just getting rid of secretary shinseki is not going to solve the problem. Let me ask drew griffin. I assume you have a good question or two for the congressman. Go ahead. Reporter i just talked to you before about this. What im not seeing from the president or president shinseki is anybody stepping up to the plate and saying we may not know who is involved in shredding evidence but we know that vets are waiting for care. How do we solve that right now . Listen, if youve got a waiting list, tell those vets to go to a local health care, private health care and send us the bill. And whats very disappointing, they have the ability to do that already, drew. There is, in law today, for the department of veterans affair, to send veterans into the private market through feebasis care and have them stand in line just to keep the numbers up inside facilities is wrong. The veterans need to get the care when they need it and where they need it. Is the president right now gloria, weigh in on this. Is the president of the United States doing what he should be doing to reassure veterans, the families, American Public that hes on top of this . He made an impassioned statement. You know, this is the president s m. O. You know, he is no drama obama. During the bp spill, people were saying, where is the outrage. People are saying this about this particular case. Hes not a scapegoat kind of guy. I was speaking to a former adviser today who said that his impulse is to find out what is wrong first and then figure it out. I think thats what youre saying, congressman, that he left the door open that he might ask shinseki to resign but he didnt call for it right away. He wants to get to the bottom of it. Thats the way he operates. My question to you is, is there anything more he can do to in statue right now to answer drews question about making sure that the veterans get the health care they need immediately . Absolutely. They have the ability today to use the fee basis care model that is in the current books. The v. A. Wont do that because they see that as taking money out of their budget, out of the v. A. Budget. Its not the v. A. s. They are a passthrough. Its the taxpayers money paying for the veterans to get their care. What do you fear most . That youre going to find this in the vast majority of systems that exist out there. Again, were talking about Veterans Health care. We havent talked about the claim that is being made by the secretary and the president that they reduce the backlog by 50 that. Is not true. Congressman, weve got to leave it there. Congressman jeff miller, thanks for coming in. Profess profess professor brinkley, thank you. Coming up, the deadliest day for troops in the ukraine crisis. A brazen attack before critical elections in ukraine. Plus, controversial comments on race from one of the nbas most outspoken owners, star of the hit tv show shark tank suggesting that Donald Sterling is not the only one out there that would be considered a bigot. train horn vo wherever our trains go, the economy comes to l

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