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Nearly Entire Population Of California Under Flood Watches; Police Name Person Of Interest In Texas Girl's Disappearance; NASA Is Seeking Applicants To Participate In A Simulated 1-Year Mars Surface Mission. Aired 1:30-2p ET

Aired February 19, 2024 - 13:30   ET

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

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[13:32:37]

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Right now, nearly all of California is under flood alerts. Authorities are telling people to stay off the roads as the already soaked state gets slammed yet again with another storm.

Forecasters are warning that heavy rain, damaging wind gusts and even rare tornadoes are possible this week.

Let's get to CNN Meteorologist Chad Myers who has been monitoring all of this for us.

Chad, what's in the forecast?

CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Another two to three inches of rainfall for places that can't use any of it. There's just no place for this to soak in. Any rain that comes down today is absolutely going to run off,

And the snow will eventually be piling up in the Sierra. That's the good news. But this is more of a rain event.

And also, as you mentioned, even the potential for some severe weather, including those winds and possibly even a tornado or two.

Now, most of the flooding is down here from Santa Barbara back over toward Ventura and even over toward where I was just a couple of weeks ago up here in north Hollywood, Bel-Air, still seeing those flood warnings now.

Because even when I was standing there doing those live shots for you guys, I would watch a little rain shower come by and the roads would be dry. But then, all of a sudden, 10 minutes later, the water was gushing down the street again, because even a light rain shower had no place to go.

This is what it looked like in northern California. Why do you stay off the roads? Because especially at night, that would be very hard to see.

There's the main highway right through northern California. So he have to be very careful just because the ground now is just so, so saturated everywhere we go.

We are in places now where we're eight inches above normal for this time of the month in places, southern California, northern California.

And right up through here you see these thunderstorms. That's where some of them, Boris, could rotate today. There could be an EF-1 or EF- 2 tornado anywhere from Napa, Sonoma, all the way down towards Sacramento, in that central valley. Don't know yet where, but there's still a possibility.

No watches, no warnings for that right now. But the warnings and the watches are down for the flooding for sure.

It is going to be another night where people that live near the hills are going to be listening or possibly just getting away from their homes and getting into some place closer to the flatlands. You just want to get away from all this rain here.

Because if that mud starts to move again, all of a sudden, we saw how much mud was in the streets, through houses last time.

This isn't as big. This isn't as big of a storm as last time. But it doesn't have to be because the ground is just completely wet.

[13:35:00]

SANCHEZ: Yes, saturated.

Chad Myers, thanks so much for the update.

MYERS: Yes.

SANCHEZ: So Texas officials say that they have found what appears to be a child's backpack as they continue searching for a missing girl. Coming up, where they found that bag and new details about a person of interest that's already in custody.

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BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: An urgent search is underway for an 11-year- old in Texas who has been missing now for four days. Audrii Cunningham disappeared Thursday morning on her way to catch the school bus.

A person of interest is now in custody, a 42-year-old man, who was arrested on Friday for an unrelated charge.

[13:40:00]

We have CNN's Rosa Flores, who is in Livingston, Texas, near the search area.

Rosa, what can you tell us? What are you learning?

ROSA FLORES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Brianna, I just talked to the mom of Audrii Cunningham and her message was for everybody to please pray and send positive thoughts towards this area, towards her daughter, and hopes that her daughter can return home.

Now, I want to show you around because this is the neighborhood where she was last seen, the 11-year-old girl, just behind me. She was supposed to catch the bus. She never got on that bus, according to police, and she never made it to school. She never made it back home.

And police and authorities, multiple agencies are concentrating their search efforts in this area here to my right. You can take a look. This is a lakefront community. This is Lake Livingston. There are multiple areas on this lake that are being searched by authorities.

Now, we have a map to give you a sense of what this area looks like. And some of the key places where evidence has been found.

Lake Livingston, where you see where I am, this is where the little girl was last seen. But if you look south on that map, you'll be able to see that there's a dam. Well that's where the backpack that little Audrii was wearing, that's where police found a red, bright red backpack with a Hello Kitty.

Downstream, where the Trinity River meets I-59, that's where searchers were looking for clues, evidence, anything on Sunday. And just to our north, in this area, is where they have been searching today. So there's been a lot of efforts to try to find her.

Now, according to state police, there is a person of interest, a 42- year-old man. But they say that while he's a person of interests, he has not been charged or arrested with any charges related to the disappearance of Audrii Cunningham.

He's arrested and in custody on an unrelated for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

Now, according to state police, the family of Audrii Cunningham is familiar with this person of interest. That is the only thing that they will actually disclose at this point in time.

Now, state police is calling this a criminal investigation, but they won't go into the details of what that means. They also say that they suspect foul play. They won't go into the details of what that means either.

But again, the search here continues. I actually just also got off the phone with the FBI, Brianna, who says that they do have investigators and resources here on the ground to help with the search.

And just to go back to what Audrii Cunningham's mother just told me, she says that her daughter is beautiful. She just hopes that everybody can look at that picture and look at her daughter, and if anybody saw anything, if they can please call police -- Brianna?

KEILAR: Clearly, a beautiful child there.

Thank you for that report, Rosa, from Livingston, Texas.

Boris? SANCHEZ: Now to some of the other headlines were watching this hour.

Police in Colorado are investigating two shooting deaths at the University of Colorado as a double homicide. The victims have been identified as Celie Rain Montgomery and Samuel Knopp. Police say the deaths do not appear to be a murder/suicide or the result of a random attack.

Meantime, former President Jimmy Carter just marked one year in hospice care, which the 99-year-old entered in February of last year after a series of hospital visits.

Over the years, Carter has survived metastatic brain cancer, liver cancer, a number of other health scares. His family tells CBS News that his spirit is as strong as ever.

Also, China is celebrating a surge in tourism. Officials say that during the eight-day Lunar New Year holiday, which ended on Saturday, there were nearly 500 million domestic trips, which surpassed pre- pandemic levels.

Still to come on NEWS CENTRAL, could you survive one year on Mars? NASA is accepting applications for its next mission. And you will be living on the red planet, kind of. We'll explain right after this.

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[13:48:58]

SANCHEZ: Do you have what it takes to be a Martian? If you think you do, you may want to call NASA. They're looking for volunteers to participate in a year-long simulated Mars surface mission.

The accommodations are going to a 1,700-square-foot 3-D-printed habitat at NASA's Space Center in Houston that they're going to share with three colleagues. And you'll be facing all of the challenges of space travel on the red planet.

Let's discuss with retired NASA astronaut, Leroy Chiao.

Leroy, thanks so much for joining us.

As a veteran of four missions to space, including a 6.5-month mission to the International Space Station, you know well what it takes to thrive in those kinds of circumstances. So what does it take to become a Martian?

LEROY CHIAO, RETIRED NASA ASTRONAUT: Well, they're looking forward to doing studies, of course. And a lot of it is social or social interactions, seeing how the group works together, see how things go. Are there any conflicts that develop?

And this kind of thing we've been doing over the years, both at NASA and in other places, too.

[13:50:03] For example, some years ago, the Russians, their big Biomedical Research Institute held a Mars 500, a 500-day international study with representatives from different countries.

And so I believe this is the longest one that we've done to date, we will do that here at Johnson Space Center in Houston. So it'll be interesting.

We learn a lot of these -- a lot from these simulations. We also study a lot from the analogs in the Antarctic. And also in the Arctic Circle. On Devon Island, there's a small place there we do research as well.

SANCHEZ: And talk to us about some of the physical and psychological challenges about being in such a closed-in space with other people.

CHIAO: Well, that's just it is. We learned from the space station experience. And the Russians learned even earlier than we did since they've been flying long-duration space station flights before we even had Sky Lab up there.

But we learned early on, or they learned early on that you can't just throw a group of people together in a closed environment for a long period of time and expect everything to work out.

So there needs to be some consideration of the personality mix. And that's one reason that we pay attention to these things during training, when we're selecting crews, putting crews together for the International Space Station. And that's worked very well.

Because even, you know, from your experience variances, maybe in college, when you decided you're going to get an apartment with your best friend and after a few months, your work friends anymore, not everyone can live in close quarters with each other. So that's part of what we're looking at.

What happens on a Mars mission, especially when you're going six months there are six months back in a small spacecraft, what are some of the psycho-social issues that are going to come up?

SANCHEZ: Yes, as I was reading this story, I was thinking to myself, it sounds a lot like being in a dorm room with someone you don't really know very well and all the myriad challenges that can come in a situation like that.

Notably though, the requirements in the application, they don't appear to be too rigorous. You have to be age 30 to 55, a non-smoker, a U.S. citizen or permanent resident. It doesn't really sound like they're looking for trained astronauts for this mission.

CHIAO: Right. And that's one of the -- I don't know, "criticism" is probably too harsh or word.

But one of the comments on these kinds of studies is, are these people that you're selecting for these studies, who can take a year off and basically go be a part of it, are they representative of what your astronaut community of people are going to be like, you know?

And so another example that comes to mind, you know, some years ago, where we had the biosphere, right, in the desert and they had a lot of issues with they're -- not only their facility, but with the interaction of the people inside and it didn't always work out well.

So, yes, that's a fair comment on how representative will be volunteers be. You'll have volunteers that are going to be paid, I'm sure. But you know, how representative of a real astronaut crew will they be?

SANCHEZ: Yes, I wonder how much they're going to be compensated. I mean, that may not be a bad gig if you want to get to learn a lot about yourself and how you deal with other peoples in a closed area.

Leroy, on the broader context, how much closer does this actually get us to the first human journey to Mars? How significant is this a step along the way?

CHIAO: Well, you know, every little bit accretes some knowledge and so there is some value to doing these kinds of studies.

But I have to say that probably the best place to do these kinds of studies is in the actual environment, aboard the ISS. So you've got people flying regularly, six-month missions.

Now it's not the year-long mission that were a year-and-a-half, at least long missions we're envisioning since it takes around six months to get to Mars and then, say, six or longer months a surface stay and then a six month return journey, you're talking about a much longer mission.

But still, you're actually in the space environment with astronauts, with cosmonauts, with an international crew, who now, we're studying those interactions very carefully.

Like I said, were very good about putting crews together. We haven't -- haven't really had any Issues, any significant issues to date.

But you know, I don't want to take away from studies like this to say that they're not as valuable. They do add some value. But again, the caveats. You know, are these people really representative of the folks we're going to send to Mars?

Frankly, you're probably going to send older people to Mars, and not for any other reason -- well, for many reasons -- but probably the main reason is because of the radiation exposure the crews going to be exposed to on the way there on the surface and then on the way back.

You know, you want to send the older people that's not -- certainly you don't want to send women of childbearing age and expose them to those levels of radiation.

But even younger folks, you don't necessarily want to expose them to higher levels of radiation, whereas older folks, they're likely to maybe pass on from other causes before the radiation causes a problem. [13:55:03]

SANCHEZ: Really fascinating perspective.

Leroy Chiao, thanks so much. Appreciate the time.

CHIAO: Yes, my pleasure.

SANCHEZ: Of course.

A major outstanding question following his death: Where is the body of Alexey Navalny? His widow is accusing the Kremlin of a cover-up, saying they are hiding it. The latest details when we come back.

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