Return to Transcripts main page

Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees

New Audio: Calls for Water Rescues, Emergency Alert Plea; Urgent Search Continues for at least 160 Flood Victims; Ukrainian Intel Officer Shot Dead in Apparent Assassination, Ukrainian Officer Shot Dead In Apparent Assassination; Mud, Mess And A Powerful Lesson In Small-Town Resilience; Ship Sinks In Red Sea After Purported Houthi Attack; 31 Los Angeles Workers Rescued After Partial Tunnel Collapse; Jury Selection Begins In Trial Of Dentist Accused Of Poisoning Wife. Aired 8-9p ET

Aired July 10, 2025 - 20:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

BILL WEIR, CNN CHIEF CLIMATE CORRESPONDENT: Hey, where are we in the floodplain? What's our plan? What can we do? Because being prepared these days, as you can see, means so much.

ERIN BURNETT, CNN HOST: Yes, and just in the past few days, you know, hundreds of flash flood warnings across the country, it is it is not just isolated to any place.

Bill, thank you so much on the ground in Hunt, Texas tonight.

Thanks to all of you for being with us. AC360 starts now.

[20:00:26]

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST, "ANDERSON COOPER: 360": Tonight on 360, what a firefighter told his dispatchers flood waters rose in Central Texas and what that says about the timeliness of emergency response that followed.

Also tonight, Ukraine in broad daylight assassination of a senior intelligence officer on a street in Kyiv. Was it payback for a string of daring Ukrainian operations inside Russia?

And later, the dentist on trial for murder? How prosecutors say he poisoned his wife and his alleged plot to have the lead investigator killed.

Good evening, thanks for joining us. We begin tonight with breaking news that could shed light on what happened almost a week ago as one of the worst natural disasters in recent memory began to unfold.

Dispatch audio from Central Texas, about a-half-hour before the first emergency warning was issued for the hardest hit county along the Guadalupe River. Now, the first call we have is from a firefighter at 3:37 A.M. local time. The calmness of his voice is remarkable, all things considered.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, ma'am, just for your 3:43. The Guadalupe is starting to come up and Schumacher is no longer passable at this time.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

COOPER: That's the Guadalupe River rising in one of the main streets, flooded. And from that point on, as the audio shows, problems were growing fast.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Respond to 2029 Highway 39 2-0-2-9 Highway 39. It's going to be for a water rescue. House caller's house flooded.

We're getting multiple calls off of 39. People are stating their houses are flooding. We're trying to advise them to get to higher area.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

COOPER: Now, the next piece of audio is of what we reported on last night. A firefighter requesting an emergency alert be issued to the community, and the dispatcher not able to make that call.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Is there any way we can send a Code RED out to our residents, asking them to find higher ground or stay home?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Ten four, standby. We have to get that approved with our supervisor.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

COOPER: As we reported last night, it would be 90 minutes from that call to when Kerrville's mayor told the "Texas Tribune" that he finally received a code red alert. Now, during that time, the Guadalupe River would overflow and a wall of water several stories high at its peak, and the 911 calls would just keep coming.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We received a phone call at our fire station. We have a lady -- she's frantic. She's at Casa Bonita, 117 Cuarto way or Casa Bonita Lodges and she said her children are on top of one of the cabanas, and they're trapped.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

COOPER: Well, the area is home to many summer camps as you know, this one. Boys rode out the worst of it in the rafters of their cabin when water reached the top of their bunks. Camp Mystic for girls, though, was of course the hardest hit. This is a new image of some of the evacuation efforts early on.

In a moment, we'll be joined by one of the staffers who was there that night and took this photo. But as would become clear though, 27 campers and staffers, many of the campers as young as eight tried to get out and didn't make it. And when daylight came a few hours later, the true dimensions of it all became clear.

In addition to all the dead, dozens and dozens of people missing and tonight, they still are, upwards of 160 people in addition to the 120- plus fatalities. And as to that dispatch audio tonight, the man who recorded it and helped install Kerr County's code red system spoke with CNN's Erin Burnett about the timing of the alerts that followed.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ERIN BURNETT, CNN HOST: So, are you saying as early as 3:27 A.M. that things could have played out very differently in terms of alerts and Code REDs and, and frankly, just to be blunt, hundreds possibly of lives saved.

JOHN DAVID TROLLINGER, FORMER I.T. DIRECTOR FOR KERR COUNTY: We'll, it's too late for Hunt. The water is up and the volunteer fire department has been there. He knew it was coming because he's awake and he's sitting in his truck looking at it. But the water has come up and the wall of water is heading down to Ingram.

So, you hear some radio traffic in a little bit that's going to warn people that -- warn to tone out Ingram that they need to start evacuating the R.V. park down river. And I fully believe that a really quick action could have -- and I'm not going to hindsight at all. But a quick action could have helped people downriver. But at 3:30, once it hit 4:30, it was just too late. The Code RED would have been ineffective in my opinion.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: Well, for more on the timeline, were joined by CNN's Shimon Prokupecz, who is in Kerr County. So, Shimon we know that the National Weather Service sent a flash flood warning just after 1:00 A.M. early on the morning of July 4th. Have local officials explained if they were monitoring the weather in the hours between when that warning went out and when they started to send alerts out to residents?

[20:05:15]

SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: No, they've not, Anderson, and that's the key thing in all of this. It wasn't until hours later when you hear from city officials, one of them was running. Another one gets woken up, you know, much later than one o'clock when the flooding is actually occurring. And I think that is what's so significant about that audio that we just heard is that everything that that audio tells us is that by the time authorities were in the midst of this, they were dealing with this, it was already too late. People were already in danger, and they were surprised by all of this.

The people in the community was because all of this happened in the middle of the night, and we have no information from any of the authorities here on the local level, the county officials, the city officials, that any of them were monitoring the weather at one in the morning, at two in the morning, at three in the morning, when days before the Texas Department of Emergency Management was putting out press releases telling people, beware, this is coming, there could be a concern here.

We have no accountability from locals as to what they were doing, how they were preparing and whether or not they were communicating with state officials who were having these concerns, Anderson. And that is the thing that is the key now here. What were they doing? How were they preparing? Were they anticipating any of this? Were they in communication with the weather services? Any meteorologists? Any people down and up the river to see what was going on? And so far, there is nothing here from the officials on that.

COOPER: I understand you're in a hard hit area right now that only a few media outlets have been able to get access to before. What are you seeing?

PROKUPECZ Well, Anderson, it's just shocking. We are lucky enough to sort of tell these stories because this community wants this story told, because this area has been cut off from public access by the Texas Department of Public Safety, the State Police here.

This is Bumblebee Hill, it's in Ingram. But I just want to show you here, Anderson, the devastation here. This is, you know, not really that close to the river, but these are all the homes that suffered from the water damage. You see, all of the destruction and the garbage and people starting to clean up their homes. People were on the roofs of these homes as the floodwaters were rising, riding out the storm to try and survive.

I want to just quickly show you one other thing, Anderson, just to show you the power of this river and what was happening here. Here's how this went, this river is -- that's 39. So, it's on the other side of that road -- it went over that road through this creek, up the back way here, all the way into this house. Anderson. And quickly, one more thing I want to show you, this here is the water line. This is the water line into this home.

The people were sleeping. There were eight people in this home, including kids, and they rode out the storm. They were able to get up because of the noise. The noise from trees breaking. They realized that the weather had turned, that the river -- the water was rising. It was in their home to their waist. They quickly grabbed everyone. There were eight people in this home and they survived on this roof.

They rode out for hours on the roof. This family called 911 and they were told there was nothing at that point that they could do for them, that they were just to get to the highest point possible. I spoke to this family, they are thankful they let us into their home. They let us into their property. They are just thankful that they survived. And now, they're just trying to rebuild. As many in this small community, because no one expected that the waters would rise in such a way. I mean, this house, when they built this house, it was even built higher by them so that they could avoid any potential flooding. And even that didn't work and that water went across the street into all of those homes. Just, you know, Anderson, just utter, utter devastation here. And it's just so sad to see all this, Anderson, just so sad.

COOPER: Yes, I'm glad they were able to get on to the roof in time. Shimon, thank you very much.

We learned a bit tonight about another one of the now more than 120 men, women and children who lost their lives almost a week ago.

Sherry Richardson was just a few weeks away from her 65th birthday. She was a grandmother of five, a mother of two. She lived in a small cabin near the non-verbal disabled adults and children that she worked with, with an organization called Hope House. They all got out okay, but she didn't make it. One Hope House staffer called her the heart and soul of the place. One of the kindest people he'd ever met. Sadly, there will be many more reports like hers. CNN's Ed Lavandera has more right now on the search for the missing.

[20:10:02]

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ED LAVANDERA, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Passing through the gates of the Last Gap Ranch in Center Point, Texas. Volunteer firefighter Razor Dobbs takes us to the edge of a sunflower field. The beauty eclipsed by heartbreak.

RAZOR DOBBS, CENTER POINT VOLUNTEER FIRE DEPARTMENT: Yes, there's been a lot of victims in this area, right here.

LAVANDERA (on camera): And this is a place that's home to you.

DOBBS: This river is this whole community's home. This river is like the backbone, this river is where people that grew up on this river and their kids are growing up on this river.

LAVANDERA (voice over): This is the story of one spot along the Guadalupe River and the monumental task of finding the missing.

DOBBS: This is a pinprick. This is a little bitty one frame of the whole movie of equipment.

LAVANDERA (on camera): Right.

DOBBS: I mean, this operation right here is going for 30 miles plus.

LAVANDERA (on camera): All the way back to camp.

DOBBS: Yes and so it is crazy.

LAVANDERA (voice over): Heavy machinery has taken over the banks of the Guadalupe River. Makeshift roads have been carved into the river's edge to haul out mountains of debris. DOBBS: This whole area right here was a huge debris field. It was full of not only, you know, natural debris, but it was full of, you know, remnants of R.V.s, houses, boats, you know, just names. So which triggers the search and rescue people that okay, this is a hotbed.

LAVANDERA (voice over): Razor can't say how many bodies have been found along this tiny stretch of the river. But every day since the July 4th flood, he says, search teams have uncovered victims here. This spot is about 30 miles downriver from Camp Mystic, the discoveries uncovered here have shocked him.

LAVANDERA (on camera): What kind of debris have you guys found down here as well?

DOBBS: Well, we've found signage from the camp part of the hills that's up there by Camp Mystic. That's 30 miles away.

LAVANDERA (on camera): That's staggering.

DOBBS: That's staggering. That's the power of this river.

LAVANDERA (on camera): This is what the search crews are having to navigate their way through these massive cypress trees that have been ripped out of the ground. All of this was well under water here. And there's so much debris even up in the trees. You can see how high the water reached here. Probably reached a little bit higher than that. And crews here, when they see something that have to be concerned that there could be someone in that debris pile still high up in a tree.

LAVANDERA (voice over): Navigating our way through the riverbed, we came across a group of volunteers trudging through terrain. A group of strangers who have come together to help.

REX CASHION, VOLUNTEER: We just all have that one common goal of helping the community and helping fellow Texans.

LAVANDERA (voice over): One week into this tragedy, and there's an outpouring of gratitude for the volunteers and emergency teams working along the river.

LAVANDERA (on camera): As you sit here and you watch this operation, and it is heroic on so many levels. But do you think it's possible that there are some families who are just not going to get their loved ones back?

DOBBS: You know, right now, I'm not even going to think about that. You know, right now, my mentality and our mentality thing is we're bringing people home and that's it.

LAVANDERA (voice over): For seven days, Razor Dobbs and his fellow Center Point volunteer firefighters have worked around the clock. As we navigated the debris field. He seemed frozen for a moment. A few weeks earlier, he enjoyed a picnic in this spot with his wife and friends.

LAVANDERA (on camera): Does it hit you pretty hard? DOBBS: I don't know, just still numb. I'm still in work mode, but it's, you know, it is filtering in. You know, my wife came down and from the house and just looked and she just started crying because not at the destruction of the property. This is going to grow back, but just the horror and the anguish that these families must feel. Number one, the powerlessness they must feel.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: And Ed Lavandera joins us now. It's extraordinary, the work that they are doing, how long can they can they keep this up?

LAVANDERA: They're saying -- where we met Razor Dobbs today, Anderson, was at the Center Point volunteer fire station, and Razor told us that the place had taken on eight feet of water during the flooding. But there today, it was taken over by hundreds of volunteers.

There were two people, they wouldn't tell us their names, but they were coordinating the comings and goings of volunteers, other responders that were trying to come out here to help in the search efforts. This one little fire station is responsible for searching about seven miles of the Guadalupe River, and there doesn't appear to be any end in sight in terms of the number of people who are willing to come out there and help them -- Anderson.

[20:15:13]

COOPER: Yes, Ed Lavandera thank you again.

My next guest, Nancy Clement, was a photographer and a counselor at Camp Mystic. This was her first summer there. She captured these photos of the flooding that night and survived after making it to the roof of a cabin where she and the other staffers stayed for two hours until the water receded.

Thankfully, she was safely airlifted out. Shortly before airtime, I spoke to Nancy about what she went through.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: Nancy, when did you first realize something was terribly wrong?

NANCY CLEMENT, CAMP MYSTIC PHOTOGRAPHER AND COUNSELOR: So I woke up at like 1:30 or 2:00 just to heavy rain. But once it started, like once we realized it had started flooding was around 2:30 or 3:00. So, it really hit me that something was really wrong whenever I was, we were on the porch kind of watching the girls evacuate to Rec Hall from their cabins.

COOPER: We're showing a picture of some of the girls walking through water to a cabin. At what point was that?

CLEMENT: That was when they were walking to Rec Hall. So, that was like right around three, which was right when I realized, like it was getting serious. COOPER: And at what point did you and the other counselors decide to onto the roof?

CLEMENT: So we went in the cabin because it started getting on the porch. So we went into the cabin and we were just kind of watching it. We were like, okay, well, it might be safer inside because in fight or flight mode, we were just like, inside might be safer than outside because we weren't sure.

So, we go inside, we start packing our stuff, like onto our beds, just because we were like, well, it won't get higher than the bed. So, anything that was on the floor, we just put on the beds. But then it started getting higher and higher. We could see out the window and so then we were like, okay, then we'll start putting it on the beds because the mattresses will float.

And so then we were like someone said, look out the window. You can see the water level. Like if you looked out the window you could see like the level of the water, like outside the window, like you could see water down here and then like normal air space up here. And so, then --

COOPER: You could actually see the water level on the window itself?

CLEMENT: Yes, and so, whenever everyone looked at the window and saw that, that was when the door broke in half and all the water started rushing in. Because we had seen like water trickling through the door. But all of a sudden the door snapped in half and like the water came rushing in.

So, then we were like, okay, we need to get out of here. So, we then go out the other door of the cabin, which is where the water was pushing against it, and it was a pull open door.

The screen door was like a push open, but there was like a door and then a screen door. And so we managed to get -- that's the door that broke in half. The picture that's showing right now. And so, yes, so we got the door open, I don't know, it was by the grace of God that we got that door open. And then we went out to the porch because we were like, we have to get out of this cabin before it fills up, because it was about waist deep at this point.

So, then we went out to the porch and we were like, just we kind of dispersed along the porch because there's different like columns and stuff. And we were just holding on to the columns and then it got to be water up to around like our shoulders. And above that was like the last place we could, like, get out, like -- So, it was like shoulders space that we could get out from under the porch and then like the, like the roof of the porch started.

So then, we were like, okay, at that point we needed to get out from under the porch because we would have been trapped under there. And so, we got onto the roof with like the couple of things we each had, like we each had like we were just trying to keep our phones just because it was the only contact we could have. And then, yes, so then we got onto the roof. We helped the rest of the people from that cabin onto the roof, which were all staff members. So, we're all like college age girls.

COOPER: And I understand -- I understand one staffer who was trying to make it on the roof actually got swept away and got caught on a volleyball net.

CLEMENT: Yes, so she was trying to get on the roof. She lost her footing, and then she got swept away and she caught onto the volleyball net. So we take off our shirts and were trying to like, tie them together. And I had a sweatshirt on so it was like long sleeves, so it had more length to tie together.

So, we were tying them together and then we look up after we tie them. And she had swam against the current that she had like got swept away and she had swam against that and made it back to the roof. We were like, how did you get back? And she was like, I swam, just help me up.

So we came, we went down there and we helped her up onto the roof. And so, then we were all just sitting up there for like two hours until the rain.

COOPER: It's amazing she was able to swim against the current.

CLEMENT: Yes.

COOPER: And I understand you heard girls singing their camp songs at a nearby building while you were on the roof, and it was after that that you started praying. How helpful was that in just in getting through the next few hours?

[20:20:01]

CLEMENT: Yes, so one girl on the roof, she had suggested she was like, hey, could we pray? So we started praying. We did like a group prayer where we all just prayed for like a little section of just like we all took a turn praying and then we heard the girls in Rec Hall. They had moved up to the second floor and we heard them all singing like praying and then we heard the girls in Rec Hall. They had moved up to the second floor and we heard them all singing like the songs we would sing on Sundays at assemblies and devotionals. Like all the songs that are really just like thanking God or praising God for all these like, wonderful things that he's done and singing just the camp songs like about how much they love the camp and stuff like that.

And so, we were like -- that just warmed our hearts. It was just really beautiful to hear. And it was like a sense of hope even though at that point the water was still up really high, it was up to like the edge of the roof. And we didn't know what we were going to do, but we heard them singing and that was just like a sense of relief, even though there was really nothing to see but there was relief to hear.

COOPER: Were you aware at that time on the roof, just how bad this had been at the camp that that other cabins had been, had been swept away?

CLEMENT: No, we had no idea that, like, there were people missing. We were just hoping for the best. I mean, we had like a kind of like feeling in our hearts, like some, like, we can't like there's got to be something that went wrong because we were like, there's so many girls at that camp and so many girls that, like, are little and don't know how to swim.

We were just really worried for them but we were just hoping that they had all made it and all been safe. So yes, after the water receded, when we like, were we decided we were like, don't make us your priority. Don't help us get down until like, you've accounted for all that you can account for.

COOPER: Nancy, I'm so glad you're okay, and I'm so sorry for what you've been through. Thank you so much for talking with us.

CLEMENT: Thank you.

COOPER: For more information about how you can help the flood victims, you can go to cnn.com/impact there's a list of organizations there.

Coming up next, a high-profile assassination in the middle of Kyiv in the middle of the day on a street. Is it the latest episode in what is now a long running high stakes intelligence and special operations battle between Ukraine and Russia?

And later, inside the rescue of 31 workers from a tunnel deep beneath Los Angeles.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[20:26:45]

COOPER: A brazen shooting in Kyiv was caught on camera this morning. What authorities told CNN was an apparent assassination. The target, an officer in the Ukrainian security service known as the SBU. Now, we're going to play the CCTV video. But CNN has purposely edited out the moment shots were first fired.

Take a look at this, the man on the bottom right of your screen is the SBU officer. The man at the top right approaching him is the would be assassin, who is masked and appears to be holding a gun. The attacker fired his weapon. Bystanders start running for their lives, hearing gunshots in broad daylight.

Kyiv police have launched a manhunt saying the perpetrator was being identified. So, for now, the alleged assassins identity remains a mystery. But authorities no doubt are investigating any ties to Russia. Assassinations have been tied to both sides of this war since it began. Tom Foreman has more.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Ever since Russia invaded Ukraine, more than three years ago, and the very visible fighting began, the Ukrainians have been mastering largely invisible warfare, picking off key Russian targets in places they might have thought safe.

FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: What we know what happened is that she was traveling in this vehicle when the vehicle blew up.

FOREMEN (voice over): In 2022, the daughter of an outspoken Russian war supporter who also promoted the Russian cause was killed just outside Moscow.

In 2023, a pro-war Russian blogger was killed in Saint Petersburg, reportedly by a bomb hidden in a small statue.

In 2024, Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, a key figure in Russia's radiological, biological and chemical defense forces, was killed by a bomb planted in a scooter just a few miles from the Kremlin, and a car bomb took another general in a Moscow suburb earlier this year.

In every case, Ukrainian agents were either highly suspected or Ukraine openly took credit. What's more, the covert agents have played a role in some of the most dramatic drone attacks. After Operation Spider Web damaged or destroyed scores of Russian aircraft in June. The head of the Ukrainian security service celebrated.

(UNIDENTIFIED MALE speaking in foreign language.)

TRANSLATION: How beautiful it looks, this airbase Belaya.

VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY, PRESIDENT OF UKRAINE: Our operation spider web yesterday proved that Russia must feel what its losses mean.

FOREMEN (voice over): By all accounts, the Russians have tried to do the same. Allegedly repeatedly trying to assassinate Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, among others. That's one reason the killing of that security service agent in Kyiv is drawing so much attention. And according to some international reports, celebration on the Russian front.

Tom Foreman, CNN.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: Joining me now is CNN National Security analyst, Beth Sanner, former U.S. deputy director of national intelligence, Beth, if the killing was carried out by Russian intelligence, either directly or indirectly, what does it say about how this war has evolved since the original invasion?

BETH SANNER, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Well, we're definitely in this period now where it's not just going to be, you know, the Ukrainians doing this kind of sabotage and assassinations behind lines. But Russia is doing this, but it's not the first time.

Between 2014, when Russia invaded Crimea and 2017 about there was this tit-for-tat assassinations and sabotage that were going on during that period, too. And so, in some ways, we're kind of coming back to this period, I think, where assassinations are going to become more common.

But, you know, as you know, and I think our listeners know, there have been attempts against Zelenskyy and others, they just haven't been successful. [20:30:30]

COOPER: We've also seen, obviously, even before the war in Ukraine, Russian, or even going back to the Soviet Union, efforts to assassinate or kill enemies with chemical agents in Europe. There was an assassination in a park in Germany linked directly to Russia as well.

SANNER: Yes, exactly. So right, this is -- you know, these kinds of black operations are part of this, you know, gray zone, we call now hybrid warfare. Lots of different names for it, but it is as old as the Soviet Union and even before these kinds of operations.

But what's interesting is that a lot of those, specifically the Skripal killing, which was the Novichok assassination, the chemical weapons assassination, in the U.K., that led to the expulsion of all of these Russian intelligence officers from the West, including the United States. And that actually forced the Russians to start using criminals, guns for hire. And we've seen a lot of arrests along in Europe because of that.

COOPER: What's the resumption of U.S. military aid? I mean, do you have a sense of how effective Ukrainian defenses are, particularly against -- I mean, what is the biggest problem now for Ukraine? Is it the drone swarms? Is it, you know, the missiles? What is it?

SANNER: Well, it is, you know, externally for -- it's not having enough air defense and, you know, long-range strike systems. So they're using long-range drones, but those aren't as successful as the ability to send long-range missiles into Russia. But it's really about air defenses right now.

And then internally, they're still having quite a bit of problems in terms of recruiting Ukrainians to fill out their forces. You know, but when we look at this in the big picture, we need support for Ukraine along those lines of air defenses to help them protect themselves and intelligence. But we also need to try to take out the capabilities that Russia has.

And these kinds of sabotage operations that the Russians -- I mean, that the Ukrainians are doing are going right at the military- industrial complex and the delivery systems, those bombers from Operation Spiderweb, trying to diminish the capacity of Russia to launch these kinds of attacks.

COOPER: Yes. Beth Sanner, thank you very much. Appreciate it.

Coming up next, CNN's John King returns to areas hardest hit by the flooding after Hurricane Helene and looks at the difference that the nine months since have made.

Plus, the story behind this remarkable video of a freighter going down in the Red Sea.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[20:38:09]

COOPER: Just as in Texas, the rivers rose in western North Carolina nine months ago. There, the floodwaters came from the remnants of Hurricane Helene. And the scars still show, but a rebirth is underway.

Tonight, in his All Over the Map series, John King returns to the hard-hit area.

(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)

KOREY HAMPTON, NORTH CAROLINA VOTER: You hear that sound? That's the sound of excitement.

Focus on the fun.

JOHN KING, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This is Korey Hampton's office, her source of income and of joy. But seeing the French Broad River is much more complicated now. The floodwaters nine months ago changed everything.

HAMPTON: We pulled people out of second-story windows in a river that just the day before had been calmer even than it is today. Yes, I mean, I watched whole houses come down this river.

KING (voice-over): Hampton and her husband Mitch run French Broad Adventures, but they also volunteer for the local raft rescue team. Days of exhausting rescues after the flooding. Then, weeks of worse.

HAMPTON: Doing recovery work, and what that means is --

KING: Looking for bodies.

HAMPTON: Yes. It painted the river in a new light for me, right? Normally, we're taking tourists out. For that amount of time, I was here doing -- we were all here doing gruesome work. I still see piles, and I wonder if there's somebody in it.

KING: So --

HAMPTON: I still smell smells and think I should go look at that pile. And I -- it's hard to kind of switch back to the, like, oh, everything's fun, no big deal.

KING (voice-over): Tiny Hot Springs flooded when debris turned this bridge into a dam. Most of downtown is still a mess.

Hot Springs Mayor Abby Norton puts the build back at 40 percent.

[20:40:03]

ABBY NORTON, HOT SPRINGS MAYOR: What I thought Washington would do would be to immediately come in and either fix everything or supply the funds for us to fix everything, but that's not how it works.

KING (voice-over): Mayor Norton says she voted third party for president, just weeks after the flood. KING: Is there a Biden difference or a Trump difference in what you have experienced?

NORTON: First of all, I'm not a politician. I never have been. But it has been better under the Trump administration than it was under Biden. My opinion.

KING: Is that because they're more receptive and responsive?

NORTON: Yes.

KING: Or is it because, you know, Biden was president when it was hell or?

NORTON: Things are getting done faster. They're more -- they are more responsive. We're getting a lot more help than we did.

KING (voice-over): But the mayor is quick to say things still take too long, like waiting for federal help to rebuild the town offices. Now troubled when she hears the president talk of big FEMA changes.

NORTON: FEMA doesn't need to be eliminated. It just -- the processes need to be easier, more user-friendly. No, I don't think it needs to be eliminated at all.

KING: Or shifted to the states or?

NORTON: No.

KING (voice-over): The postcard views bring the tourists here. The Appalachian Trail and the Blue Ridge Mountains. The Atlantic Ocean is nearly 500 miles away.

So when Josh Copus saw the rain and the winds, his first thought was the old Marshall Jail he converted into a hotel might need some sandbags.

JOSH COPUS, NORTH CAROLINA VOTER: At 9:00, the water went over the railroad tracks, which hadn't happened since '77. In an hour, there was 4 feet of water in the town, and you could just immediately know that this was a different kind of event. And I sat at the courthouse, which is the highest point in downtown, and watched it all happen for about two hours.

KING: This is that spot Josh is talking about, the steps of the Madison County Courthouse in Marshall, North Carolina. Just imagine that. That's your hotel. That's your restaurant. That's your life's work. That's your savings spent renovating that building.

And you had to come up here because the water's coming up over the bridge, and it's creeping towards your business. You're watching this horror unfold, and then you realize, I can't even stay here because here comes the water. I got to go.

Did you think you were done? COPUS: In that moment, 100 percent. We were alone. There was no cell phone service. You know, I didn't even talk to my mom for days. And when you're in that space and you're looking at the destruction, it feels like you are done.

KING (voice-over): Day after day, shoveling mud with a brief break to vote.

COPUS: I remember standing in a line, and this woman, you know, from our community was like, I heard they -- FEMA condemned Marshall. And I was like, I just came from there.

No, we're coming back. And she was like, I saw it on the Internet. I mean, that stuff is hard, but it's the world we live in.

KING (voice-over): But it is different here. No one shoveling mud asked anyone who they were voting for.

No one celebrating the hotel's reopening is here to debate national politics. And lost on no one is the sparkling backdrop for dinner and music on the patio. The same river that changed everything.

COPUS: It's not like everyone's walking around with a blue hat or a red hat. It's just, we're just people down here. And some of the beauty of the flood was like how it really taught us that, again, we have more in common than we have that separates us.

We're all Appalachian Americans. Like, that's something that we all connect with. So regardless of your political affiliation, like, our culture unifies us.

(END VIDEO TAPE)

KING (on-camera): Anderson, just have to tell you, it was remarkable to be in these tiny communities. The resilience and the character of the people. Yes, they have some complaints about FEMA, about the federal government, about Washington. Yes, they know they deserve more money and they deserve more quickly. But they're not waiting for the help. They're rebuilding their towns by themselves.

And one point I want to make, given the tragedy we're all watching unfold in Texas, they all say, yes, FEMA could do more, FEMA could be better, FEMA could be more streamlined, FEMA could be more efficient. But they all say from their experience nine months ago, it would be a horrific mistake to make FEMA go away.

COOPER: John King, thanks very much.

Coming up next, how 31 workers survived a tunnel collapse in Los Angeles.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[20:49:42]

COOPER: This is a video of a purported Houthi attack on a ship that was sunk in the Red Sea. You first see an explosion on what appears to be the deck. Later in the video, released by the Houthis, you can see a massive hole in the hull of the ship. And finally, then the entire ship goes down.

Of the 25 on board, 10 people were rescued, three were killed, and several others were taken hostage, according to European officials.

[20:50:03]

On the other side of the world, by contrast, everyone got out alive, 31 people in all after the world around them fell in. Reporting from Los Angeles for us, CNN's Stephanie Elam.

(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)

STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A sigh of relief across Los Angeles Thursday after 31 workers were rescued during what officials describe as a, quote, "tense and traumatic tunnel collapse." A portion of the tunnel, which is part of a wastewater project, collapsed about 400 feet below ground, roughly 5 miles from its only entry and exit point, briefly trapping the workers.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They've lost their phones so they do not have any communication with them at this point.

ELAM (voice-over): The incident occurred when workers were operating a tunnel boring machine, which builds a tunnel as it digs, as shown here in this instructional video from the project. The chief engineer says a section that was already completed caved in due to, quote, "squeezing ground," a phenomenon that happens when the soil deforms during an excavation.

The Los Angeles Fire Department says trapped workers managed to climb over 12 to 15 feet of loose soil and debris to the other side of the collapse and onto a tunnel vehicle, which took them to the exit, where they were hoisted up in a rescue cage to safety.

L.A. Fire Captain Danny Wu was one of the 100 or so firefighters who responded. He says he was expecting the worst upon arriving at the scene.

CAPTAIN DANNY WU, LOS ANGELES CITY FIRE DEPARTMENT: Driving there in my car, my heart just sank. It was just so sad to see 31 families out there just not knowing what was going on, so I'm just really happy for the outcome.

ELAM: How bad could this have been?

MICHAEL CHEE, LOS ANGELES COUNTY SANITATION DISTRICTS: It could have been very bad because we're talking about 31 human lives. But I'm very happy to say it wasn't. We're very pleased and very, very happy that all of the workers were able to get out.

ELAM (voice-over): Now, officials say construction on the tunnel will be halted indefinitely. CHEE: We have to do an assessment for safety. We have to do an assessment for structural integrity. And we have to do engineering assessments to ensure everybody's safety going forward.

ELAM (voice-over): Stephanie Elam, CNN, Los Angeles.

(END VIDEO TAPE)

COOPER: Remarkable.

Next, day one in the murder trial of a dentist who prosecutors say poisoned his wife and plotted another killing from jail.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[20:56:48]

COOPER: More than two years after the defendant was accused of fatally poisoning his wife, jury selection got underway today in the James Craig murder trial. Craig, a former dentist, has pleaded not guilty to six felony charges. He faced his life in prison without the possibility of parole if convicted of murder.

CNN's Jean Casarez has more on this case.

(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)

JAMES CRAIG, A DENTIST WHO MURDERED HIS WIFE: My name is Dr. Jim Craig, and I practice at Summerbrook Dental Group.

JEAN CASAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Craig and his wife, Angela, had all the appearance of a storybook life. The couple lived outside of Denver, where they were busy raising their six children. Craig ran a seemingly successful dental practice, but prosecutors will soon paint a very different picture of what was going on behind the scenes.

On March 6, 2023, Craig made Angela's daily protein shake. But after drinking it, she didn't feel well. She texted her husband, "Have you eaten anything?" "I had my protein shake and magnesium makes me weird. This is not hungry." "Are you nauseous?" "No, I feel drugged."

Over the next 10 days, she went to the hospital three times, but they couldn't figure out what was wrong. On March 10, she texted her husband, "Everything was negative or normal. They just did an ultrasound of my heart." Investigators believe she continued to drink protein shakes at home.

As his wife was fighting for her life, investigators say Craig had a girlfriend come visit. She spoke out to ABC News after his arrest.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you think that James Craig allegedly poisoned his wife to clear the deck so he could be with you?

KARIN CAIN, DATED MURDER SUSPECT: There's no way a motive. There's been no planning a future. CASAREZ (voice-over): News of her poisoning and the arrest of Craig rocked this small community.

MICHAEL LUCERO, FRIENDS OF ANGELA AND JAMES CRAIG: It just makes me sick.

KAREN LUCERO, FRIENDS OF ANGELA AND JAMES CRAIG: It didn't seem real.

M. LUCERO: Yes.

K. LUCERO: It didn't seem like something that he could ever do to her.

CASAREZ (voice-over): But prosecutors will point to computer searches allegedly made by Craig weeks before the murder on February 27, 2023, the day he ordered arsenic metal, and days later, potassium cyanide.

How many grams of pure arsenic will kill a human? Top five undetectable poisons that show no signs of foul play. Craig has pleaded not guilty to first degree murder as well as other charges. His defense? He claims his wife was depressed and had been suicidal for some time.

Court documents say James believed that Angela was intentionally overdosing on opioids and another unknown substance, and he was sure Angela's toxicology would come back positive. Her autopsy report showed she had lethal concentrations of cyanide and arsenic poisoning in her system.

(END VIDEO TAPE)

COOPER: Jean, how is a dentist able to purchase potassium cyanide?

CASAREZ (on-camera): Well, that's a good question because it's not something you can just go out and buy, even a dentist. Well, he had to give a reason. And he said he was a surgeon and he was going to perform a cranial facial reconstruction. And during the procedure, he was going to use some of the chemical. And if it was a success, everything would be published in the National Institutes of Health.

COOPER: Jean Casarez, it's such a bizarre story. Appreciate your time. Thank you very much.

CASAREZ (on-camera): Thank you. And someone lost their life.

COOPER: Yes.

CASAREZ (on-camera): Yes.

COOPER: Jean, thank you.

The news continues. The Source with Kaitlan Collins starts now.