PBS NewsHour full episode Aug. 31, 2017

On the "NewsHour" tonight: wading into the wreckage.
As floodwaters recede in Houston, rescue crews move door-to-door, and an explosion at a chemical
plant fuels fears of the challenges ahead.
Then: returning home after Harvey.
We join Texans as they see the damage to their neighborhoods for the first time.
And rise of the robots, Making Sense of what a future with driverless cars and automated
lawyers might mean for your job.
VIVEK WADHWA, Author, "The Driver in the Driverless Car": Almost every profession I look at where
you require human labor or you require intelligence, I see computers being able to do better than
us within the next 10 years.
MILES O'BRIEN: All that and more on tonight's "PBS NewsHour."
(BREAK)
MILES O'BRIEN: Harvey is gone, but Houston still faces Texas-sized problems tonight.
It runs the gamut, from catastrophic housing loss to the dangers of damaged chemical plants.
And as the region struggles to recover, officials are searching for the living and the dead.
William Brangham begins our coverage.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Above, it's more sunshine and mostly clear skies.
Down below, flooding from Harvey still as far as the eye can see.
But as the water begins to recede, fire and rescue crews in Houston are going door-to-door
in flooded neighborhoods, hoping they won't discover more bodies.
MAN: We're finding out, just to see how much damage there is, if there is any civilians
that have been left behind.
We don't think we're going to find any humans, but we're prepared if we do.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: At the same time, many of the people who evacuated during the flood
are now starting to come home and assess what's left of their homes.
I'm in the Northeastern Houston right now, which is one of the areas that was hardest
hit by the storm.
And, as you see, people are coming home, taking out of all the muddy, soaked belongings and
dumping them here on the curb.
Just outside Houston, there were small explosions at a chemical plant, which send 30-foot flames
and plumes of smoke into the air.
A power outage had left containers of volatile chemicals unrefrigerated, and as they heated
up, they ignited.
It happened at the Arkema site in Crosby, Texas.
Dozens of workers were removed before the hurricane.
And officials had already ordered people living within a mile-and-a-half to leave.
BOB ROYALL, Harris County Fire Marshal's Office: We're trying to make sure that our citizens
are comfortable in what's going on, and that they know the truth.
And so with that, these are small container ruptures, that may have a sound -- excuse
me -- may have a sound of a pop or something of that nature.
This is not a massive explosion.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said the smoke posed no immediate threat
to public health.
Fifteen sheriff's deputies went to hospitals, but most were quickly released.
To the east, Orange County, Texas, ordered a mandatory evacuation this afternoon as the
Neches River surged higher.
The river also knocked out the water supply in the city of Beaumont, Texas.
That forced the evacuation of nearly 200 hospital patients by air, and the closure of local
shelters.
WOMAN: We are not sheltering anybody anymore.
With the situation that we are in with the water, we are having people -- people that
are displaced, we are finding other locations for them.
That's what we're working on.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Vice President Mike Pence, with his wife, Karen, and other members of
President Trump's Cabinet today visited areas of Texas hit by Harvey.
The vice president, visiting the severely damaged city of Rockport, where Harvey first
came ashore, again promised full federal support.
MIKE PENCE, Vice President of the United States: Just know we are with you, and we will stay
with you until Rockport and all of Southeast Texas come back.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Meanwhile, Harvey's hit on the country's energy supply also continued.
Colonial Pipeline said it's shutting down part of a key line that moves nearly 40 percent
of the South's gasoline.
It could start carrying fuel again by Sunday.
But the interruption, coupled with the closure of several big Texas refineries, sent gas
prices soaring.
In turn, Energy Secretary Rick Perry, who is a former Texas governor, and part of the
Pence entourage, announced he's releasing 500,000 barrels of crude oil from the Strategic
Petroleum Reserve.
RICK PERRY, U.S. Secretary of Energy: Gas prices are going to go up because of the cut
in supply.
Every state's attorney general will be watching to make sure that there's not price gouging
going on, and anybody that is considering raising prices above what would be considered
to be appropriate need to watch out.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: To the north, remnants of Harvey moved further inland.
It's been downgraded to a tropical depression, but it's still soaking Western Louisiana and
Southern Arkansas.
And as much as 10 inches of rain could fall in Mississippi, Tennessee and Kentucky in
the hours ahead.
MILES O'BRIEN: That report from our William Brangham, who joins us from Houston with more.
William, Houston is no stranger to flooding.
Do you get the sense that people there see this as a -- if you will excuse the term,
a watershed?
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Yes, in many ways, Houstonians are familiar with flooding.
It has been going on for decades here.
The thing that is not talked about as often is that the way Houston was built and the
way it's continued to grow has very substantially exacerbated what those floods do to this area.
The nickname for Houston is the city with no limits and in many ways that is true.
The growth that occurred over here the last few decades has been explosive.
And what's happened is, is that they have been digging up farmland outside the skirts
of the city, and they put up parking lots and highways and developments.
And you don't have to be a hydrologist to know that if you replace spongy, absorbent
farmlands with hard, concrete surfaces, when a lot of comes down, that water is going to
flood these neighborhoods.
So Harvey was going to be a problem no matter what.
But there are many people who argue that there could have been things done in the decades
past that could have made Harvey a little bit less damaging.
MILES O'BRIEN: It sounds like there is a big civic conversation that needs to occur in
Houston that might be a little bit overdue.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Certainly, that conversation has gone on in the past.
But every time reforms have been suggested, they have been put aside for one reason or
another.
After I believe it was Ike in 2008, there were numerous flood control projects that
were proposed.
They were shelved.
After Allison came through and devastated a lot of this area, more reforms were proposed.
They were put aside.
Voters here have several times said that they don't want to change the zoning laws, which
are incredibly lax and don't really require cities and townships to put in good flood
control measures.
So, every time this has come up as a conversation, people recognize that it's an issue, but the
incentives of economic growth and economic development and inexpensive housing are very
powerful.
And so the conversation maybe will occur again, but right now the focus is really on rescue
and recovery.
MILES O'BRIEN: William Brangham in Houston, thank you.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: You're welcome, Miles.
MILES O'BRIEN: Louisiana is the next target for Harvey's wrath.
Like Texas, the terrain is prone to flooding, and for residents there, the worst is yet
to come.
Congressman Clay Higgins represents Louisiana's 3rd District, which covers much of the state's
southwest coast.
He's a former law enforcement officer and now serves on the House Science Committee.
I spoke with him by phone a short time ago.
Congressman Higgins, thanks for being with us.
I know you were very worried about your district in advance of Harvey, and the concern was
that there be a direct blow on that second approach to landfall.
It appears you dodged that bullet.
Give us a sense, though, of what the consequences of Harvey were in your district.
REP.
CLAY HIGGINS (R), Louisiana: Well, the storm sort of hit exactly at the state border, which
my district, of course, includes the parishes in Louisiana that border Texas in the southern
portion of the state.
So, so many of our citizens from Louisiana and from the district that I represent were
part of that rescue, civilian rescue effort that is commonly referred to as the Cajun
navy, which essentially is just thousands and thousands of civilians with boats and
four-wheel drive trucks that load up their vehicles with water and food and temporary
shelter, and they just roll out to areas, neighborhoods that have been flooded.
And they begin rescuing people from second-floor, you know, apartments or from rooftops or out
of attics.
A very common mistake is for someone, as their house begins to flood, they go up to the second
story, or they crawl into the attic.
And then they have no way out.
So we have to use chain saws to cut through the roof in order to get sometimes whole families
out of an attic on to a boat and then to high ground.
And then from there, they have to be picked up by buses and brought to a shelter, a temporary
shelter, until they can get put somewhere more permanent, until they can return to their
homes and begin the recovery process.
I have been through many storms, brother, and I have never seen this much water, never,
not in Katrina and not in any of the storms that have hit Louisiana.
I'm 56 years old.
I have never seen this much water dumped at one time.
MILES O'BRIEN: Tell us a little bit about how many shelters you have in your district,
how many people have come from the hard-hit areas and are being sheltered there.
REP.
CLAY HIGGINS: We have two major shelters set up in Calcasieu Parish in the Lake Charles
area, with hundreds and hundreds of displaced Americans out of Texas that have been brought
into those shelters.
So it's quite an endeavor.
There are so many entities working with this response and recovery and rescue efforts,
that it can be quite difficult to coordinate all those entities, especially when you include
civilians working in massive quantities just out of the goodness of their heart, out of
their own pocket.
They don't get a dime back, you understand.
And you have large government responses.
It can be quite complicated.
MILES O'BRIEN: Congressman Clay Higgins, Republican of Louisiana, thank you for your time.
REP.
CLAY HIGGINS: And thank you, sir.
And God bless you for shedding light on this and for your kindness during this interview.
I thank you for your journalistic integrity, sir.
MILES O'BRIEN: The record-breaking nature of Harvey has renewed the conversation about
the link between climate change and extreme weather events.
Congressman Higgins is a vocal climate change skeptic.
I asked him if the events of the last week have at all changed his mind.
You can listen to that exchange on our Web site, PBS.org/NewsHour.
Today's explosions at the Arkema chemical plant northeast of Houston are underscoring
concerns about the hazards of dangerous chemicals in the area.
Houston is a major hub for refineries and has some of the largest petrochemical operations
in the country.
Our science producer, Nsikan Akpan, has been looking into those concerns.
He published a piece this week documenting some of the other leaks and ruptures in the
region.
It is on our Web page.
Nsikan, tell us a little bit about what we know about Arkema, first of all, what is happening
there.
NSIKAN AKPAN: So, Arkema produces organic peroxides, so these compounds that are used
to make plastics.
And the thing is that they are inherently unstable.
So, they tend to react with other elements in the environment.
They are also very sensitive to the heat.
So, Arkema was storing these compounds in refrigerated boxes.
And when the power went out, the heat rose, it led to pressure to build, and you had this
explosion.
MILES O'BRIEN: And, unfortunately, the backup systems didn't keep the materials cool, and
hence you had this difficulty.
Let's listen basically to Richard Rennard, who is an executive with Arkema.
RICH RENNARD, ARKEMA Executive: What we have is a fire.
And when you have a fire where hydrocarbons, these chemicals, are burning, sometimes, you
have incomplete combustion and you have smoke.
And any smoke will be an irritant to your eyes or your lungs or potentially your skin.
So, if you are exposed to that, we certainly are encouraging anyone that may be exposed
to the smoke coming from this fire to call their doctor or to seek medical advice.
MILES O'BRIEN: So, point well-taken.
It's not as bad as an outright leak, I suppose, but, with the smoke, there is some concern,
isn't there?
NSIKAN AKPAN: Exactly.
I mean, these compounds are corrosive, which means, like I said, they tend to react with
things.
So, they want to react to the water in your eyes.
They want to react with the compounds in your skin.
And that might explain why 15 deputies from the sheriff's office were sent to the hospital,
because, you know, potentially, they were exposed to this incomplete burn that he brought
up.
MILES O'BRIEN: Good reason they have that mile-and-a-half zone around it where people
shouldn't go in for now, until this gets sorted out.
Let's look at the bigger picture here.
Houston, in general, huge petrochemical facilities, a number of them.
You have had a chance to kind of look at the big picture.
Tell us what people are looking at, what concerns there are.
NSIKAN AKPAN: So, the Sierra Club looked into EPA data, and they found that 170 chemical,
petrochemical and also oil and gas hazardous waste facilities exist in Harris County, which
is home to Houston.
Many of these facilities exist in floodplains.
And we know that at least a dozen of them were damaged by the hurricane.
MILES O'BRIEN: Obviously, a lot of petrochemicals in Houston.
Give us an idea of the types of concerns, the specific problems that can crop up.
NSIKAN AKPAN: So, it is known that petrochemical companies, that they have these emissions
whenever they start up and shut down.
And so, before the hurricane even arrived, there were reports, regulatory filings by
these companies showing that they were releasing hundreds of pounds of these chemicals into
the air.
But most of them were done in a controlled way, which isn't so much of a hazard to the
environment.
If you leak these very slowly, they spread out in the air and they are not going to be
toxic to somebody.
What happened was, after the hurricane hit, there was so much rain, there was so much
wind that there was damage to what are called floating roof tanks.
And so the floating roof tank is exactly what the name suggests, right?
So you have a roof that moves up and down depending on how you fill the tank.
And what that allows is, it allows for a certain amount of venting.
It allows for a certain amount of the chemical to turn to vapor.
What happened was, at some of these facilities, these tanks took on so much water, that their
roofs actually collapsed into the liquid that they were holding, which allowed the vapors
to escape into the air.
MILES O'BRIEN: So, let's talk about other potential hazards.
A lot of Superfund sites in Houston.
What about those?
NSIKAN AKPAN: So, there about a dozen Superfund sites in Harris County.
Many are in the floodplains.
And so far, Harris County has issued about 45 boil water advisories, and I think about
-- and there are about 160 issued for the state.
MILES O'BRIEN: OK.
So you could ask the question, we knew a hurricane could hit Houston, of course.
Are these facilities, when you look at the big picture, are they hardened enough against
that threat?
NSIKAN AKPAN: Well, so, other studies have looked at these floating roof tanks and shown
that, when hurricanes hit, that they do tend to take on destruction.
So, due to the fact that they are built with very thin walls, that they have very unsturdy
foundations, these things do tend to move around when there is a lot of rain and a lot
of wind.
MILES O'BRIEN: Nsikan Akpan is our science producer.
Thank you.
NSIKAN AKPAN: Thank you, Miles.
MILES O'BRIEN: There are lots of questions about the health risks associated with this
explosion, and what people need to know about the air and water in Houston.
Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health is here to guide us on some of the
public health questions about these toxic chemicals.
First of all, give us an idea.
When we hear about chemicals like organic peroxides or benzene, those kind of things
either in the air or the water, that naturally raises people's concern.
Help us calibrate how concerned we should be.
DR.
ANTHONY FAUCI, Director, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases: Well,
it depends on the concentration of these things.
You were just talking about the smoke because of the fire and the burning.
The authorities in that area cordoned off the area, so that you have a circle around,
so that you don't get direct exposure to that.
Exposures, if they are mild, in the sense of barely just a small concentration, it's
mostly an irritant, particularly the peroxides, that in that smoke would irritate the skin
or even irritate the lungs.
So, for the most time, it could be either just a little bit of a nuisance irritant,
or if you get a really big whiff of it, particularly people who have, for example, reversible airways
disease, like asthma or different types of hypersensitivity diseases, you could get a
serious problem.
For the most part, what I'm seeing and I'm hearing that is being done there about cordoning
off an area to keep people far enough away that at worst it would be just an irritant,
hopefully, it stays that way, and we don't see any more of it going to where people are.
MILES O'BRIEN: What about when we hear about chemicals that end up for one reason or another
in the water itself?
How big a concern should that be?
DR.
ANTHONY FAUCI: It really depends on what the chemical is.
You had mentioned hydrocarbons, things like benzene and toluene.
Those are a little bit more than irritants, because they can be absorbed from the gastrointestinal
track and from the lungs.
And when it does, that what you can do is that you can then have toxicities systemically
or to different organs.
That is really with a whopping dose, so I don't want people to get concerned that if
it is a really diluted in water, that there is going to be a problem.
But at its worst, it does have the potential to cause organ system dysfunction, like liver,
or kidneys, or even central nervous system, and even some cardiac arrhythmias.
But, again, that's in the extreme.
You don't want people to be concentrating that that is going to happen to them if they
are in the water and you have a very low concentration of these.
But, ultimately, the capability of that is, it really depends on what the dose is and
the concentration.
MILES O'BRIEN: Tell us about some of the other immediate health concerns people in your position
have as they look at Houston.
DR.
ANTHONY FAUCI: Yes.
Well, it really is a broad spectrum.
It goes from anything from the immediate, acute thing, and we have already seen it on
TV multiple times.
You have people, for example, who could drown, that tragic situation of a family drowning
in a van.
You have people who could get electrocuted.
You could have injuries.
That is the first thing.
Then, when you have the water which is contaminated with sewage, you can have multiple problems
with that.
It could be, you could have gastrointestinal problems by inadvertently swallowing some
of the contaminated water that is contaminated with sewage, and you can get a variety of
bacterial or viral types of gastroenteritis.
Also, you can irritate or even get infections in the skin.
You could have either obvious lesions, scrapes and cuts, for example, in your lower body.
We have seen people who are in the water up to their waists.
Those are the kind of things that people need to be aware of.
That is one of the reasons why Secretary Price of HHS declared a public health emergency
and why our own CDC, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, are working with the
local and state authorities to make people aware of this broad spectrum of health hazards
that you need to pay attention to.
MILES O'BRIEN: As you look toward the long-term, what are the real concerns -- and we're talking
years down the road -- for people who have been through something like this?
DR.
ANTHONY FAUCI: Well, for the long-term down the road, clearly, whenever you have traumas
like this with natural disasters, there always is the situation of mental issues, namely,
depressions, either de novo depressions in people who have not been depressed or exacerbations
of people who have a propensity to depression, and even post-traumatic stress disorder.
Also, as I think people don't fully appreciate sometimes, when you have a situation like
this that we're seeing on the ground, people get dissociated from their medical care.
They don't have access to their standard medicines that they take, or they need medical care
that they get interrupted can have long-term effects on their health later on, as well
as immediate effects on their health.
So, those are the kind of things that you don't immediately think of when you think
of a hurricane or a flood, but that are important health issues.
MILES O'BRIEN: Dr. Anthony Fauci is the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious
Disease.
Thank you for your time.
DR.
ANTHONY FAUCI: Good to be with you.
MILES O'BRIEN: According to the latest estimates, about 100,000 homes were damaged by Harvey.
But today in Houston, the skies are clear and the water is receding.
It was the first time many were able to see the destruction firsthand.
Our William Brangham joined some on their journey back home, and he is back with this
story.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: This is your place?
This is Jonny Silva's first day back home since the flood.
The waters have receded, and now he and his wife are here to see the damage.
How high was up the water?
JONNY SILVA, Hurricane Victim: It's about here.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Jonny's a pipe fitter for the oil and gas industry.
His family evacuated in the middle of the night when the water kept coming in their
apartment.
JONNY SILVA: I have got two kids, one boy and one girl.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: This was their room?
JONNY SILVA: Yes.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Jonny says he doesn't want his son and daughter to come and see this.
He thinks it'll be too tough for them to see how bad things are.
So, what are you going to do?
JONNY SILVA: I don't know.
We called numbers for help.
So, you know, we got to wait.
I don't know, for real.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: The Silvas live in an apartment complex in a lower-income minority neighborhood,
and everyone here is going through the same process: coming home, assessing the damage,
and just wondering how to rebuild.
PHYCLICIA JOSEPH, Hurricane Victim: Now I see how the people in New Orleans really felt.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Phyclicia Joseph, like most people here, was evacuated by boat.
A few residents rode out the storm up on the second floor of the complex.
Phyclicia spent the last two days crowded in a relative's apartment.
PHYCLICIA JOSEPH: She has a one-bedroom, 20 of us in a one-bedroom.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Twenty people in a one-bedroom?
PHYCLICIA JOSEPH: Mm-hmm.
We made it to her house, and we went from there.
We just made it home today.
Today.
We didn't have clothes, nothing.
But we did the best that we could.
But it's really sad.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Phyclicia has an apartment here.
So does her sister.
So does her aunt.
They have all lost nearly everything they own.
PHYCLICIA JOSEPH: It's all gone.
It's damaged.
But I'm glad that we are alive.
I'm not really worried about material things, because we can always get this back.
We can't get our lives back.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: One of her neighbors wasn't so lucky.
The woman who lived in this apartment here had come back to check on her two dogs, but
when the local bayou overflowed, its surge of water, strong enough to knock over these
fences, swept her off her feet, and she drowned.
Neighbors are now looking after the dogs.
It's estimated that 80 percent of the people in the hardest-hit parts of the Houston area
don't have any flood insurance.
Everyone we spoke to here were renters, and none of them had coverage.
Victor's a chef at a local hospital.
He saw the body of his neighbor who was swept away.
He initially evacuated with his wife and mother and two daughters.
VICTOR, Hurricane Victim: I jacked up all -- everything that I could on to some cinder
blocks here.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: His apartment is now a soggy, stinking mess.
He has no flood insurance either.
He lost replaceable things, like beds, a fridge and furniture, but irreplaceable things too.
And how long do you think -- how long before you think you can...
(CROSSTALK)
VICTOR: Get back to normal?
Man, I don't know.
To be honest, I really don't know, because, man...
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: I'm sorry.
VICTOR: Kind of sucks.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: He's also upset because, while he was evacuated, he says someone stole
his tools.
You think it's just people taking advantage of a disaster?
VICTOR: Quick buck.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: The people here are doing what tens of thousands are doing across Houston
and Southeast Texas today.
It's the same all-too-familiar ritual after almost every natural disaster: assess, grieve,
and start the long road back to normal.
For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm William Brangham in Houston, Texas.
MILES O'BRIEN: While Louisiana gets battered by Harvey, New Orleans is not in the crosshairs
this time.
Twelve years ago this week, it was a different story, as Katrina made landfall.
And there are lessons to be learned about the long, difficult road of recovery ahead
for Houston.
Mitch Landrieu is the mayor of New Orleans, and he joins us now.
Mr. Mayor, good to have you with us.
MITCH LANDRIEU (D), Mayor of New Orleans, Louisiana: Thanks for having me.
MILES O'BRIEN: I'm curious what your best advice is to your counterparts in other cities
that are more hard-hit this time.
MITCH LANDRIEU: Well, it's not really a time to give advice.
I can tell you, I had an opportunity to watch your previous two segments, and it's just
heartbreaking.
It brings back so many incredibly difficult memories.
And exactly what was said in both of those segments is unbelievably prescient and correct.
Those individuals that lost everything are going to go through a very, very difficult
time.
This is one of the worst disasters that the country has ever seen.
It's hard to compare the two, but it's clearly as big, if not bigger, than Katrina.
And, of course, people lost everything.
And so they're upended.
A lot of people are in shelters.
You can see what is happening down in the southwestern part of Louisiana and in the
eastern part of Texas in Beaumont, with them still suffering the effects of the storm,
and rescues not being complete yet.
So, the rest of the nation is going to rally to the cause.
They're going to be there to support the people of Texas and the people of Southwest Louisiana.
I want Congress to learn the lesson of Sandy and Katrina and not quibble over how much.
It's going to be an extensive amount of money.
And I know that they're going to step up to the plate and make sure that the financial
resources are available to help this community stand back up.
This is a national crisis.
It requires an immense and a total and complete national response.
And I know that our nation is up to it.
MILES O'BRIEN: You get the sense that we're learning the same or not learning the same
lesson over and over again, or are we getting better at this?
MITCH LANDRIEU: Well, to a certain extent.
I can say this, that the emergency response teams across America are far better prepared.
And you can see the response happening right now on the federal, state and local level.
This doesn't happen by one level of government.
And our first-responders are out there, and doing a really, really good job under very
difficult circumstances.
There are very few -- actually, there are no cities in America that can prepare adequately
for a Category 4 storm that drops 50 inches of water on you in a short period of time.
It's just not possible.
And, you know, people are trying to get out of harm's away.
We just have to make sure they have what they need.
Now, there is the rescue.
There is the recovery.
And then this is the long-term thing that you were talking about a minute ago, the rebuild.
It's not something that happens overnight.
People get disassociated from their homes.
They feel a sense of lack of security.
They don't have the financial resources to stand back up.
The one thing that they shouldn't have to suffer is what happened after Katrina and
then after Sandy for a minimal period of time, about wondering whether or not the resources
are going to be there.
This is clearly going to be in excess of a $100 billion event.
I don't think that there is any question about that.
But it's really important that the nation step up to the plate and do this, as a federal
government, in partnership with the state and local authorities.
Now, the other thing that you are going to see -- and you are seeing it already -- is
miraculous, which is people helping each other.
I just talked to a guy a couple of minutes ago who was here rescuing people 12 years
ago.
And would you know it that he was in the Houston area today rescuing people.
John Besh and our chefs are over there feeding people.
Our firefighters are there.
Of course, this is happening all from all over the country.
And it is miraculous to watch the people of America come together in difficult times,
where it's clear that we're all in the same boat.
And I think the lesson to be learned is, we ought to be that way all the time.
And we would all be the better for it.
MILES O'BRIEN: It is quite literally a two-way street.
I remember Houston's help of New Orleans 12 years ago.
You know, we're in the acute phase, as it were, of this crisis.
A lot of attention, a lot of focus.
As the media turns its attention elsewhere, as we all get on with our lives, that can
be the hardest time for the victims, right?
MITCH LANDRIEU: Yes.
Well, there's no question about it.
I mean, and hopefully in a reasonably short period of time, everyone who can be rescued
will be rescued.
Unfortunately, there will be more deaths because there are people that have not yet been found.
There are people that are in shelters.
Eventually, they will move back into some sense of normalcy, to the extent that that
is possible.
And then the media is going to go on to North Korea and a whole bunch of other stuff.
In the meantime, all of these individuals are going to be left behind.
And we have to make sure as a nation that we don't leave them behind, that we get them
the resources that they need.
On top of that, the economic picture is that Houston and Beaumont and Lake Charles, Louisiana,
are the hub of the nation's national security because of our energy policies.
So, just economically, we have to do it.
So, I'm hoping that Congress has learned the lesson -- and I think they have -- that we
don't really have to quibble about this.
This shouldn't have any impact on the debt ceiling.
We should just kind of get through this.
This is going to cost the nation a lot of money.
It is an investment that is well worth it.
All of these communities are important to the United States of America, and we ought
to all lift up all the individuals that are going to be hurt and would make it easier
for them to come back.
But this is not a handout.
It is just a hand up.
And it is a part of who we are as Americans.
MILES O'BRIEN: You know, one of the lessons of Katrina, I think, was that, you know, people
have a hard time moving forward after these situations.
And part of that is being prepared in advance.
Do you think that that lesson has been well-learned?
MITCH LANDRIEU: Well, I think we're better at it.
Unfortunately, a lot of times, folks, you know, just don't listen.
Sometimes, folks do.
And even when they do listen, you get overwhelmed by a storm like this.
But it really is important to understand that you can't guarantee that people are not going
to get hurt.
What we have to do is be prepared and try to engage in what they call risk-reduction
strategies and how we build back, where we build and things of that nature.
Then, of course, you get into the emergency response, which is far superior.
I think everybody can watch it on TV.
This is something that has taken a long time to develop amongst the emergency responders
across the country.
There is better command-and-control, better communication, better coordination.
And this is a good effort.
However, you can see how easy it is for a city to be overwhelmed by Mother Nature.
When you get a Category 4 storm or a 5 storm coming at you with 150-mile-an-hour winds
and 50 inches of rain, you get an interior rain event like this, and you just -- you
know, Mother Nature will have her way with you.
So, as we go forward, we have to think about how to build back stronger.
Now, one of the real challenging things is that every time somebody has trauma in their
life, the first thing they want to do is go back to exactly like it was.
And it is a little bit harder to think about, well, what should it have been?
And each community has to go through that on their own.
And I'm sure that Houston and Beaumont and all of the areas that have been hard-hit will
think through that, and build back better than it was before.
MILES O'BRIEN: All good words.
Mitch Landrieu, the mayor of New Orleans, thank you for your time.
MITCH LANDRIEU: Great.
Thank you so much.
MILES O'BRIEN: The outpouring of people helping those in need has been enormous in Houston
over the past few days.
One example is a group of restauranteurs and chefs who got together to supply food to both
victims and first-responders.
Houston Public Media's Tomeka Weatherspoon paid a visit.
She joins me now from the Convention Center.
Tomeka, what are the restaurants doing?
TOMEKA WEATHERSPOON, Houston Public Media: They're gathering together to help each other
and to help the community.
So, we visited Reef Restaurants today, and they're making so much food.
Yesterday, they told me they made 10,000 meals to give away to hospitals, evacuees, and first-responders.
I talked with co-owner of the restaurant Jennifer Caswell.
And she said the restaurant community is just really tight-knit and they just wanted to
do something to help.
JENNIFER CASWELL, Co-Owner, Reef Restaurant: As we sat there and watched what was going
on and we knew that we wouldn't be able to come back in here and serve our customers,
we knew that we had product that had to be gone through.
we also knew that we had customers and vendors that wanted to help.
And we wanted to turn the kitchen into a hub to be able to do that.
And we know that our chef community and our restaurant community is such a strong and
well-knit community that we could get everybody on the same page and working together towards
that goal.
MILES O'BRIEN: So, Tomeka, how do the restaurants figure out how and where to send the food?
TOMEKA WEATHERSPOON: Well, initially, it seemed like they just put the word out that they
were available to help in any way that anyone needed.
And, you know, I was talking to some chef this morning, and they were saying now they're
just getting requests.
They're getting text messages.
Can you please help us with this?
And they are more than happy to help.
And they're getting a lot of volunteers too.
So, I talked with a volunteer who is helping in another way.
His name was Gavin Torabi.
And he was going around to precincts, and he went to a station in Southwest Houston
to see what they needed.
GAVIN TORABI, Volunteer: They were down to basically tortilla chips and water.
And I said, instead of helping aimlessly wander, let's direct our focus.
And it started out.
We asked, how many mouths do they have?
They said, we can't tell you.
So, we guesstimated, bought 50.
And 50 turned into 100, and 100 turned into 200.
And, like I said, we're up into the 2,000s now.
TOMEKA WEATHERSPOON: And, Miles, like I said, people are volunteering in a lot of different
ways.
One really crucial way is physically driving the food to these locations, to these hospitals,
to these shelters.
I talked with and rode with a volunteer driver.
His name was Mark Austin.
And he pointed out he is delivering food from some of the best places to eat in Houston.
MARK AUSTIN, Volunteer: In the last 24 hours, I have delivered food from Reef, Riel Restaurant,
Hugo's, Brennan's.
So it's not -- we're not just delivering ham sandwiches to people.
We're delivering hot, fresh, best product food, you know, from James Beard Award-winning
chefs.
MILES O'BRIEN: Tomeka, I imagine there are a lot of other people and a lot of other places
that could use this kind of service.
I think of assisted-living facilities, even private homes.
Are there plans to expand?
TOMEKA WEATHERSPOON: Well, right now, they're really trying to get organized, because demand
is so high.
And they're really just getting off the ground.
So many restaurants had flooding issues and travel issues.
And they have just so many demands they need to meet.
I was talking to one chef, and he was saying you know, they ran out of protein really quickly.
But because of all the volunteers, they were able to get it within the hour.
Another restaurant owner said you know, what we really need is refrigerated trucks.
But the need changes minute by minute as the situation here keeps changing.
MILES O'BRIEN: It's great to see that kind of response.
Tomeka Weatherspoon with Houston Public Media, thank you.
TOMEKA WEATHERSPOON: Thank you.
MILES O'BRIEN: In the day's other news: Another storm has formed far out in the Atlantic,
and it's growing into a major hurricane.
By late today, Irma already had sustained winds of 115 miles an hour.
It could reach the Eastern Caribbean by early next week.
No word yet on where the storm might go from there.
There's new retaliation in a diplomatic duel between the U.S. and Russia.
The State Department today ordered the Russian Consulate in San Francisco to close, along
with two sites in Washington and New York.
Moscow had already forced cuts in American diplomats, in retaliation for U.S. sanctions.
But White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders says now the two sides are even.
SARAH HUCKABEE SANDERS, White House Press Secretary: We have taken a firm and measured
action in response to Russia's unfortunate decision earlier this year.
We want to halt the downward spiral, and we want to move towards better relations.
We will look for opportunities to do that.
MILES O'BRIEN: The announcement came as the new Russian ambassador to the U.S. arrived
in Washington.
He urged calm, and quoted Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin, saying, "We don't need hysterical impulses."
The U.S. military put on a new show of force over the Korean Peninsula after the North
fired a missile over Japan two days ago.
U.S. B-1B bombers were joined by F-35B stealth fighter jets for the first time, along with
South Korean planes.
South Korean military footage showed the bombers and fighters carrying out drills at a military
field in the south.
North Korea condemned the drill as a rash act.
Defense Secretary James Mattis has officially confirmed that more U.S. troops are on their
way to Afghanistan.
He wouldn't give exact numbers today.
Other officials have said about 3,900 troops will deploy, however.
Just yesterday, the Pentagon confirmed about 11,000 U.S. troops are already in Afghanistan.
That's several thousand more than previous figures.
In Iraq, the prime minister of Iraq announced that Tal Afar has been fully liberated from
Islamic State fighters.
The capture follows the fall of Mosul, the country's second largest city, in July.
ISIS still controls small pockets in Northern Iraq and along the Syrian border.
Days of monsoon rains in India have triggered a new disaster.
An aging five-story building collapsed today in Mumbai, the country's financial capital,
killing at least 22 people.
Rescue workers managed to pull 35 survivors from the ruins, but others could be trapped.
Witnesses said they heard a bang as the building went down.
AMINA SHEIKH, Witness (through translator): The sound was so loud, we all got scared.
When I first saw, there was only smoke.
And when the smoke cleared, we saw the building, but, by that time, a lot of people were crushed
by the building as it collapsed.
MILES O'BRIEN: The deadly rains are the heaviest in 15 years in Mumbai.
Overall, the monsoon has claimed more than 1,200 lives across India, Nepal and Bangladesh
since June.
The crisis engulfing Rohingya Muslims in mostly Buddhist Myanmar grew even worse today.
Reuters reported 27,000 Rohingya have fled into Bangladesh since Friday.
Another 20,000 are stuck at the border.
Meanwhile, three boats carrying refugees capsized today before reaching Bangladesh.
At least 26 women and children were killed.
The Rohingya are fleeing reprisals by government troops and vigilantes, after Rohingya insurgents
attacked police posts last week.
Back in this country, civil liberties groups hailed a federal judge's decision to block
a Texas law restricting sanctuary cities.
It would have taken effect tomorrow.
Among other things, the law would let police ask people about their immigration status
during routine stops.
Texas' Republican governor has promised to appeal the ruling.
It turns out a Wells Fargo scandal over fake bank accounts was far larger than first reported.
The company said today 3.5 million accounts may have been opened without customers' knowledge,
in a bid to meet sales targets.
That's up from 2.1 million.
Wells Fargo has since settled with federal regulators and paid $140 million -- $142 million
in a class-action suit.
On Wall Street today, the Dow Jones industrial average gained 55 points to close at 21948.
The Nasdaq rose 60 points, and the S&P 500 added 14.
We're going to get a better picture tomorrow of how strong job creation is when the monthly
employment report comes out.
But whatever that snapshot looks like, there are concerns about the rise of robotics and
automation, and what that means for the future of the work force.
Our economics correspondent, Paul Solman, has been exploring that subject.
Here's his latest report for our weekly series Making Sense.
PAUL SOLMAN: In Silicon Valley, author Vivek Wadhwa says he already lives in the future.
There's his mostly driverless electric car.
OK, so, your car can open the garage door and greet you in the driveway?
VIVEK WADHWA, Author, "The Driver in the Driverless Car": Yes.
And then, when I get on the road, I can put it on autopilot and say, OK, car, take over.
Look at that.
I mean, I'm just sitting here with the car doing its magic.
PAUL SOLMAN: There's his magical solar home, which has cut his energy bills from $1,000
a month to $500 a year.
VIVEK WADHWA: This is how all of us are going to live in about 10 or 15 years from now.
Solar is going to keep dropping in price, to the point that it's almost free.
PAUL SOLMAN: And having survived a heart attack, his magical health cube, 32 instant tests
that give new meaning to the phrase doc in a box.
VIVEK WADHWA: And each test costs about 10 or 15 cents.
PAUL SOLMAN: Here's an EKG.
VIVEK WADHWA: A 12-lead EKG, the same stuff that they do at hospitals.
And everything goes into your electronic medical records on the cloud.
PAUL SOLMAN: In a heartbeat.
His daughter-in-law taught me to use it.
VIVEK WADHWA: So, we're going to take blood, my friend.
PAUL SOLMAN: What I won't do for television.
VIVEK WADHWA: Oh, there's your reading.
PAUL SOLMAN: So, my blood glucose reading has already been done?
VIVEK WADHWA: Yes.
PAUL SOLMAN: Projecting ahead, says Wadhwa:
VIVEK WADHWA: We live in the most amazing period in human history.
We can have unlimited energy, unlimited food, provide education for everyone, clean water,
all the things that have held mankind back.
PAUL SOLMAN: But when it comes to what we will all do for a living?
VIVEK WADHWA: I see millions of jobs in every industry being wiped out.
PAUL SOLMAN: Just ask the voice of Amazon.
VIVEK WADHWA: Alexa, how many people does Amazon help employ?
COMPUTER VOICE: Amazon.com is an employer of 222,400 people.
PAUL SOLMAN: That's a quarter-of-a-million people that Amazon is employing.
VIVEK WADHWA: Well, how many people does Wal-Mart employ?
-- 1.3 million people.
And Amazon is just getting started with automation.
They're working on drone-based delivery.
They're going to have self-driving trucks.
The workers put stuff in boxes, but there's no reason why robots couldn't do that as well.
PAUL SOLMAN: Now, a human-free future isn't here just yet.
But nearly half-a-world away, at Oxford University, researcher Michael Osborne also thinks jobs
are toast.
MICHAEL OSBORNE, Oxford University: Back in 2013, we came up with an estimate that as
much as 47 percent of current U.S. employment might be at high risk of automatability.
Waiters and waitresses is one example.
Truck drivers is another, forklift drivers, accountants and auditors, cashiers, people
working in retail, even umpires, interestingly, referees.
PAUL SOLMAN: To be sure, futurologists have been predicting automation Armageddon for
decades.
But , says economist Carl Frey, the future is now.
CARL FREY, Oxford University: The potential scope of automation has expanded quite rapidly,
and a new set of occupations and industries are affected as a result of that.
PAUL SOLMAN: And it's going to happen faster than we think, says Vivek Wadhwa.
VIVEK WADHWA: Almost every profession I look at where you require human labor or you require
intelligence, I see computers being able to do better than us within the next 10 years.
I'm talking about a mass replacement of humans with artificial intelligence and robots.
PAUL SOLMAN: But health cube or no, certainly not the doctors who saved his life, who keep
him healthy now?
VIVEK WADHWA: But why not?
I mean, I -- 10 years from now, I would trust an A.I. doctor over a human doctor any day,
because the A.I. doctor will be looking at all of my data.
PAUL SOLMAN: And it isn't just happening at Wadhwa's house, but also nearby, where Facebook
was built.
JOSH BROWDER, Student: Mark Zuckerberg stayed here his first summer in Palo Alto.
PAUL SOLMAN: Stanford University computer science undergrad Josh Browder working to
fulfill a Shakespearian ambition: Kill all the lawyers.
JOSH BROWDER: I'm trying to replace the $200 billion legal industry with artificial intelligence.
PAUL SOLMAN: Browder's created Do Not Pay, an app he built to fight parking tickets in
the U.K., where he'd amassed dozens, and couldn't afford the tab.
JOSH BROWDER: And so I had to figure out other ways to get the tickets dismissed, if the
signage is not up to code, or if the parking bay is illegally too small.
There are these letters where if you cite the code, cite how your case applies to it,
you can get out of the ticket.
There's nothing the government can do.
PAUL SOLMAN: Browder claims a 60 percent success rate, and has expanded Do Not Pay to the U.S.
and to other legal imbroglios.
JOSH BROWDER: So, it currently works for over 1,000 areas, 1,000 legal robots, I like to
call them.
All sorts of consumer rights issues.
But, soon, I'm going to do much more complicated stuff, like lowering your property tax bill
or filing for divorce.
PAUL SOLMAN: Free legal software for all.
Browder sees it as a sort of realization of a family dream.
JOSH BROWDER: Yes, so, my great grandfather was the head of the American Communist Party.
PAUL SOLMAN: In the 1930s and '40s, Earl Browder ran for president twice, as a communist.
JOSH BROWDER: He's a big believer in everything being free, and so I like to think, although
I'm doing it in a different way, using technology and Silicon Valley, he would be proud.
PAUL SOLMAN: But to Wadhwa, it's not the thought, but the technology that counts.
VIVEK WADHWA: A young kid who has no qualifications in artificial intelligence, who has no qualifications
in law, he's talking about wiping out a $100 billion industry.
So this is the amazing and scary thing about the future we're headed into.
PAUL SOLMAN: Scary, because, while automation is the very definition of productivity -- more
output per unit of labor -- as Oxford's Carl Frey points out:
CARL FREY: Sadly, since the 1980s, quite a few workers have had a bad experience from
automation, and I think that is what is determining much of the resurgence in populism that we
see now.
PAUL SOLMAN: Indeed, Frey has just published a paper showing that automation anxiety was
strongly linked to votes for Donald Trump.
So, are Vivek Wadhwa and the Trump electorate seeing the same dark future?
And if so, are they right?
Not at all, says Silicon Valley computer scientist Jerry Kaplan.
JERRY KAPLAN, Computer Scientist: There's more people employed today than there ever
have been.
And how do we explain that, except through a process by which increased productivity
increases economic opportunities and actually employs more people than the robots displace.
PAUL SOLMAN: For example, if we're wealthier, we will take more vacations.
JERRY KAPLAN: You have got jobs like flight attendant, hospitality workers, masseuses,
yoga teachers, advisers of every kind.
And that's a result of the increase in the discretionary income we will have as the result
of the growth of the economy.
PAUL SOLMAN: So, think of all the jobs we could do that we haven't even thought of yet.
And that's true, admits Oxford's Osborne.
MICHAEL OSBORNE: In the 2000s, we have seen occupations such as Zumba instructors emerge.
PAUL SOLMAN: But, he says, as more and more workers compete for the same non-tech jobs,
what will the jobs pay?
MICHAEL OSBORNE: I think we have seen some of that in the last couple of decades, right,
with median wages remaining relatively stagnant.
PAUL SOLMAN: Right.
MICHAEL OSBORNE: Technology is, many people believe, the key driver behind that.
PAUL SOLMAN: And tech researchers like Osborne are driving the technology.
And so I asked:
If you say to a fellow researcher, hey, we're displacing jobs, or putting downward pressure
on low-skill wages, what do they say to you?
MICHAEL OSBORNE: I think -- this is -- I'm not sure I want to answer this question, to
be honest.
PAUL SOLMAN: But I pressed for an answer.
MICHAEL OSBORNE: So, we're in this really exciting, but, in a way, terrifying period
of history where it could go either way.
PAUL SOLMAN: And that happens to be the message of Vivek Wadhwa's new book, "Driver in the
Driverless Car."
Humanity, he says, is at a tipping point.
VIVEK WADHWA: We are the drivers in the driverless cars.
We're basically now sitting there watching it all happen.
PAUL SOLMAN: No hands.
VIVEK WADHWA: No hands.
Look, ma, no hands.
The car is taking us where we told it to go, but the car is in control.
PAUL SOLMAN: At least we hope it is.
There's all these cars coming up.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Stop it.
Stop it.
VIVEK WADHWA: You're right.
Why didn't it do -- it wasn't stopping, was it?
PAUL SOLMAN: No, it wasn't stopping.
VIVEK WADHWA: It would have stopped.
I would have bet it would have stopped.
PAUL SOLMAN: Happily, we will never know, any more than we do at the moment about the
future of robots and jobs.
For the "PBS NewsHour," economics correspondent Paul Solman reporting -- don't do that again
-- somewhat anxiously from El Camino Real in Palo Alto.
MILES O'BRIEN: Now another in our Brief But Spectacular series.
Tonight, Manu Prakash of Stanford University, who shares his take on designing affordable
scientific tools for all.
MANU PRAKASH, Stanford University: I grew up in India.
I love science, and it was very clear.
But, you know, we couldn't afford the traditional scientific tools.
And so, from that moment itself, the idea that you can invent your tools as you go along
became very important to me.
I was in Uganda in 2013, and I noticed this centrifuge being used as a doorstop, and that
I realized the fact that there was no electricity.
And so, of course, what good is a scientific instrument if it only runs on electricity
that you don't have?
We make affordable scientific tools that are accessible to everyone, to bring the joy and
discovery of science, not just for the traditional scientist, but every single kid in the world.
We have shipped 50,000 of what we call Foldscopes.
These are origami microscopes that anybody can make.
They cost just $1.00 to make.
This year, we have set a goal to release a million Foldscopes to kids around the world,
and we will not stop until every single kid carries a tool like that in their pocket.
I call it frugal science.
Over the last five years, we have been working in many countries, many of them in Africa
and India, to really be able to try to understand, how do you empower community health workers
who are on the front lines of infectious diseases trying to protect all of us?
And the area that we focus on is infectious diseases and diagnostics.
Now, diagnostics has a really hard problem, which is, it's like searching for a needle
in a haystack.
And one problem that we have been tackling in this is, how do you really bring that needle
out?
And we just discovered a new tool that we describe.
We call it paperfuge.
It's an idea to build a centrifuge, a really legit complex tool that's used for sample
preparation, out of a very simple children's toy.
I actually am carrying it in my pocket, so if you haven't ever seen one, depending on
how much force I apply and how much air drag there is on this disc, and how much torque
is there in these strings, I can back-calculate how fast this will spin.
One million rotations per minute.
That's very, very fast.
What I can do is take a drop of blood with a lancet, fill it in.
And now what I'm doing is, as I spin, the blood that I have taken in there is also spinning.
And between 30 seconds to a minute, we can separate the content of that blood into plasma
and red blood cells.
And now the ratio of how much red blood cells I have to plasma actually gives me an indicator
of whether I have anemia.
If I was to spin this for a couple more minutes, I might be able to separate out the cells
that are infected with malaria.
Intellectually, it becomes quite an exciting endeavor to really be able to do the same
kind of performance that you would do in a traditional lab, but to be able to do it with
almost nothing.
My name is Manu Prakash, and this is my Brief But Spectacular take on frugal science.
MILES O'BRIEN: And finally: My friend and former colleague Jeff Flock is well known
as a storm-chasing reporter.
This morning, he was live on FOX Business News, when, by coincidence, he spotted his
own daughter, our "NewsHour" reporter and producer Elizabeth Flock, on the back of a
truck.
Let's take a look.
JEFF FLOCK, FOX Business Network: This is what they call a deuce-and-a-half.
That's a two-and-a-half-ton truck.
It is Army issue, but now they sell them to folks.
These people -- that's my daughter.
She's waving.
MAN: What?
JEFF FLOCK: My daughter works for the "PBS NewsHour."
Wave us again, Lizzie.
MAN: What?
JEFF FLOCK: How about that?
I just -- I knew she was here.
I hadn't seen her.
MAN: Oh, my goodness.
JEFF FLOCK: I will be god-darned.
Isn't that something?
Shucks.
MAN: That's your daughter just driving by...
JEFF FLOCK: Oh, boy.
I'm sorry.
(CROSSTALK)
MAN: ... in a two-and-a-half-ton truck, military truck.
JEFF FLOCK: I'm sorry.
I know you have got a lot of daughters.
And her photographer for the "NewsHour."
I didn't expect that.
I'm sorry.
I'm off-topic here.
(LAUGHTER)
MILES O'BRIEN: I have never -- never seen Jeff at a loss for words.
And, online, you can find Liz Flock's remarkable story of three brothers who bought that truck
to help save stranded people in the hurricane.
Find that and more on our Web site, PBS.org/NewsHour.
I know one proud poppa who will be checking that one out.
And that's the "NewsHour" for tonight.
I'm Miles O'Brien.
For all of us at the "PBS NewsHour," thank you.
We will see you tomorrow.
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