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Early Start with Rahel Solomon

Tsunami Alerts Throughout Pacific After 8.8 Magnitude Quake; Tsunami Waves Hit U.S. Shores After Major Pacific Quake; India Overtakes China as Number 1 Smartphone Exporter to U.S.; Police Digging Deeper into Manhattan Gunman's Motive. Aired 4-4:30a ET

Aired July 30, 2025 - 04:00   ET

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

[04:00:00]

MJ LEE, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning and welcome to our viewers joining us from the United States and all around the world. I'm MJ Lee. Rahel Solomon is off.

It's Wednesday, July 30th, 4 a.m. here in Washington, D.C., and 10 p.m. Tuesday in Honolulu, Hawaii.

We begin with the tsunami threat across the Pacific with the first big waves now hitting U.S. shores in both Hawaii and California after one of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded struck off Russia's far eastern coast a few hours ago. Officials in Hawaii have reported waves of more than five feet or well over a meter higher than normal tide levels in some areas.

Sirens blared as authorities urged beachgoers to stay out of the ocean and evacuate to higher ground. Authorities are opening emergency shelters as they expect flooding in coastal areas.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RANDAL COLLINS, HONOLULU DEPARTMENT OF EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT: Our number one priority is life safety. And so right now, it's an easy thing. Get away from the beaches, get inland, and get upward.

If you do live in an area that's within a tsunami area, first and foremost, go to a friend's house, go to a neighbor's house, go to your workplace, but go inward and upward out of the tsunami area. If you have no other place to go, then go to the tsunami assembly areas that we have activated around Oahu.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEE: Hawaii's governor warns that tsunami waves, quote, will wrap around the islands. He says everything has been OK so far, but the threat is not over yet, and they do not want people to let their guard down. While airports have not been impacted by the waves, all flights in and out of Maui are canceled for the night.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOSH GREEN, HAWAII GOVERNOR: Right now, we still have not seen any wave activity come past the Big Island. That's important. Until we see what happens on the Big Island and the full wraparound of the islands, we won't feel that we are in a position to start seeing and saying that we're kind of in the clear.

The airports have not yet been impacted, of course, by a wave, but all flights in and out of Maui have been canceled for tonight. There are about 200 people sheltering at the terminal. We hope to take care of them comfortably. We'll certainly do that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEE: Many people took no chances of risking the potential danger and got into their cars to evacuate. Video from one Hawaii resident shows both drivers and boaters preparing for the imminent tsunami waves. A time-lapse shows a heavy traffic jam adjacent to a marina in downtown Honolulu.

And as I mentioned, parts of California are now reporting their first tsunami waves, and the threat remains up the West Coast as well into Washington and Oregon.

The 8.8 magnitude quake that caused these tsunamis is the strongest since 2011 and tied for the sixth most powerful on record.

CNN meteorologist Allison Chinchar is tracking the latest developments. So Allison, the first waves have already started to hit the coast of the Hawaii islands. What are you seeing right now?

ALLISON CHINCHAR, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Right, so the thing that people have to understand is it's not just a one and done for these waves. There's going to be added waves on top of it.

You have to think of it as though when you would drop a stone or a rock into the water and you get that ripples, but there's many ripples that come out. That's what's going to happen here. So yes, some of these areas have already had their first or even their second wave, but they're going to continue for the next several hours.

The few that we have had so far, we've had two reports of at least four feet for some of those waves in Hawaii. And then some of the surrounding areas have had at least two to three foot waves coming and going off and on throughout the last hour or two. This is why we still have a tsunami warning in effect for Hawaii, as well as a very small portion of the Northern California coastline.

You may be wondering, OK, why that small section when all of the areas surrounding it are yellow, indicating an advisory. And that is because that area of the Northern California coast, the bathymetry of the coastline there is entirely different. It makes them more prone and more susceptible to those waves coming further inland and having a much bigger impact. So that is why that particular area is still under the warning.

Now, here, this red dot, this is where the earthquake took place several hours ago. Essentially, what happens is when you have a tsunami from an earthquake -- and not all earthquakes trigger tsunamis.

[04:05:00]

But when you do, especially from the type of fault line we had here, the thrust fault, what typically happens is the water pushes out in one direction. You can see that here. It's all spreading this way.

Now, as those waves propagate outward, you can time them relatively accurately of when they are going to arrive in certain places, three hours, five hours, 10 hours, whatever it may be for the location that we are discussing.

So we've been doing that the last several hours, timing it out for Alaska, timing it out for Hawaii, even into the the western coast of the U.S., places like Washington and Oregon and even into California. Most of these areas have already seen at least the first wave. Some of them have had two or three waves come through already.

But like I said, this is going to continue as we go through the next several hours. And finally, those waves begin to level back out to what would be considered normal. Here's the thing about this particular earthquake.

Yes, it was a very strong one, an 8.8. That is considered great. That's the term that is used for magnitude eight or higher. But also the fact that it was very shallow.

Had this been a much deeper earthquake, the waves likely would not have been as impressive because that kind of gets buried underneath the ground more. You don't have much as much force that kind of lifts that area up. 13 miles deep -- that may sound like it's very deep into the ground, but actually from a geological standpoint, anything under 44 miles is actually considered exceptionally shallow, especially for this one in particular.

So, MJ, this is going to be something we have to kind of keep an eye on over the next several hours as more and more of those waves do begin -- or do continue to kind of propagate, not just in Hawaii, but also up and down the western coast of the U.S.

LEE: Allison Chinchar, we'll keep checking back in with you. Thank you so much.

And let's bring in CNN's Ivan Watson now following developments from Hong Kong. Ivan, we've been tracking these developments minute by minute.

What are you watching most closely this upcoming hour?

IVAN WATSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, I mean, this all started with an earthquake that struck off the coast of Russia's Far East, Kamchatka, in the mid-morning on Wednesday. And now here we are eight and a half hours later, and we're seeing the power of that earthquake, 8.8 magnitude, in the form of bigger waves hitting the west coast of North America. It crossed an entire ocean, the Pacific Ocean. The Far Eastern region of Russia, which was directly impacted, is sparsely populated. But there was one town there, Severo-Kurilsk, in the northern Sakhalin Islands, Kuril Islands, that has declared a state of emergency. There we saw scenes of flooding along the coast.

No reports of injuries, though. The state news agency in Russia did report ships being ripped from their mooring and being taken out to sea.

Also worth noting that in the hour after the initial earthquake, there were very powerful aftershocks within the next hour, to the tune of 6.9 and 6.3 magnitude, so you can imagine what that would be like for the residents there.

Japan has been on alert all day, and it has registered, at least in one area, the port of Kuji, a 4.3-foot wave, 1.3 meters. That's the highest that we've heard from Japan thus far. They have evacuated, sent evacuation orders to nearly two million people. And we've seen images in one instance of people taking shelter on a rooftop.

We had an update from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant that the workers there were evacuated. There were no injuries or abnormalities reported there. But why?

That's because back in 2011, when there was a 9.1 magnitude earthquake, more powerful than today's, that sent a tsunami barreling to the Japanese coast that not only killed more than 22,000 people but also triggered the Fukushima nuclear meltdown. People still dealing with the aftereffects of that today.

And there have also been tsunami advisories going all the way down to Central America with warnings that they could face 1- to 3-meter waves in Costa Rica and Ecuador, all signs that authorities are taking these threats seriously and urging their citizens and residents to move away from coastal areas and move to higher ground --MJ.

LEE: Ivan Watson in Hong Kong, thank you so much.

Let's go now to Juliette Kayyem, CNN senior national security analyst and former assistant secretary for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. She joins me now from Los Angeles.

First off, Juliette, there are different kinds of warnings, depending on the expected severity of the tsunami. There's a watch, there's an advisory or a warning. What are we expecting on the U.S. coast, West Coast, where you are, and have you been getting any warnings yourself?

JULIETTE KAYYEM, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: I signed up for alerts. I'm visiting family and have not gotten anything significant.

[04:10:00]

I think what we're seeing is, you know, obviously there is a difference from the preparedness homeland security perspective between the height of a wave and what kind of damage it can do. So the kinds of warnings that you've been seeing or alerts that you've

been seeing over the last couple of hours, both for Hawaii and now in the last 12 or 13 minutes in California, is less to do. You're going to get the 100 foot wave, which is what people think about when they think about movies.

But the fact that earthquakes generate tsunamis that are not wind driven, they are essentially earth driven, that power is the thing you worry about from a from an emergency management perspective because it could just sort of wipe people away if they're on the shore.

So I think that the warnings that are going on now are essentially twofold. One is, you know, get out of the water, get away from the water.

The second is if the alerts get higher, right, get more worrisome, then you really want to elevate yourself in terms of getting out of the of the surge of activity.

As we were just reporting, remember, tsunamis are deadly, but they also have secondary consequences because of their power, whether it's car accidents, nuclear meltdowns, people panicking the way they drive or whatever else. And so part of what officials are doing is it's trying to get that that fear and prepare people to get away from the ocean now so that they're not surprised.

LEE: Yes, I want to talk a little bit more about that because, you know, at least compared to some other kinds of natural disasters and weather events that we're more used to covering, tsunamis are relatively more rare. So how are authorities prepared to deal with just the possibility of people not paying enough attention?

KAYYEM: Yes, that's such a great point because you were not acclimated to tsunamis. Right. And so it's been a long while, especially in the United States, since we've had any significant.

And we know that surviving tsunamis or understanding tsunamis is really, you know, based on your experience them -- experience them in the past. There's a sort of famous and maybe notorious story about the tsunami that hit in the Indian Ocean 20 plus years ago that when the water was receding, as it does in a tsunami, visitors, people who didn't understand tsunamis went into the ocean thinking it was interesting, right, because the water is surging back. And locals understood that when the water recedes, run for the hills. That's what they understood.

So we're teaching people in real time what tsunami planning and preparedness is. It's not like a tornado because you have some warning. It's not like a hurricane because you have very little warning. We had a couple hours, but its impact can be very damaging.

I want to urge people. The size of the wave is relevant. It's the pace and the speed of the wave. And right now, these speeds suggest no one should be near the water until the imminent concerns dissipate. And emergency managers say that it's safe to return back to shorelines. LEE: And just in terms of emergency preparedness on the West Coast, I mean, is the first priority right now facilitating evacuations to higher ground? And I mean, obviously goes without saying, stay away from the water, stay away from the coastlines.

KAYYEM: Yes, that's exactly right. I think we have a little bit more knowledge in a couple hours and California may benefit from Hawaii. We simply don't know if the news from Hawaii in terms of, you know, people did evacuate, was there minimal harm so far?

I want to be careful because we don't know and we may not know until daylight but was probably because of the aggressive evacuation. I have never seen anything like that. I know Hawaii, the governor, the mayor, everyone get away from the water and people did. You don't see beaches empty like that in Hawaii.

So that is very important. It's either evacuation or it's just elevation.

At this stage, nothing we're seeing yet would suggest, you know, the L.A. coastline would have to evacuate. We're not seeing those kinds of warnings. We're at advisory or less at this stage. So it could just be elevating. You know, if you're in an apartment complex, get up to higher floors for a couple hours. But none of that is happening now.

It is simply just don't be near beaches because we don't want that surge to harm people. And that's where emergency managers seem to be focused.

But you are exactly right. We are not familiar with this very often. But people in what's called FEMA Region 9, which covers Hawaii, California and the Pacific Northwest, are prepared for it. And that's the kind of messaging we're seeing from the National Weather Service and FEMA and California and the Pacific Northwest are prepared for it.

And that's the kind of messaging we're seeing from the National Weather Service and FEMA and local emergency managers.

LEE: And Juliette, do you know what kinds of post-tsunami recovery plans a state like California has in place?

KAYYEM: I would -- I would be careful here in some sense and say more generically, it is not a muscle that has had a lot of use. There are probably plans on the shelves when you have the kind of harms that California has had that are are more frequent and quite deadly. Let's say fires, of course, but also earthquakes, which are generally what people fear here. There is a strong recovery element to them.

In this case, it's going to be -- the first thing is, of course, going to be a disaster assessment, whether this is a disaster or not. We don't know. Are there people that are harmed? Are there buildings that are harmed? And then recovery will pretty much look the same as it does for other jurisdictions that may have experienced, say, flooding, wind or harmed or harmed to infrastructure. You just begin to rebuild.

It will look relatively the same from what we've seen, slightly disorganized as it often is. But it's the same muscle that we use in recovery that we would for any other harm.

LEE: All right, Juliette Kayyem, thank you so much for joining us late this hour where you are in Los Angeles.

And stay with CNN. We will keep you updated throughout the hour with the latest on the earthquake in Russia and the tsunami threats around the Pacific region.

Plus, New York remembers the four victims of Monday's shooting in Manhattan as police try to find out more about the gunman's motive, what we are learning about his past.

And some major U.S. household goods are about to get a price hike, which one company says are due to Donald Trump's tariffs.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEE: The U.S. Federal Reserve is once again expected to hold interest rates steady when the board meets later today, despite President Trump's loud and frequent demands for lower rates and his attacks on Chairman Jerome Powell, whom he has threatened to fire.

Meanwhile, new data released on Tuesday shows Americans are growing more hopeful about the economy. Consumer confidence rose two points this month, staying stable since May after April's big plunge, but still remaining below last year's levels. Global economic data is showing signs of similar optimism.

The International Monetary Fund has bumped its global growth forecast up to three percent. It was at 2.8 percent back in April. That's after the U.S. GDP was raised to 1.9 percent and China's economy performed better than expected. But the IMF warns there are still risks, especially from the ongoing trade uncertainty.

Earlier this week, the Trump administration announced the contours of a trade agreement with the EU, calling it the biggest deal ever made.

But after three rounds of talks, U.S. negotiators have failed to reach any such arrangement with China. Tariffs are set to skyrocket on August 12th if no trade deal is in place. Both sides sounded hopeful about a possible extension to the 90 day pause currently in effect, but there's been no decision on that quite yet.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I just had a phone call from Scott Bessent and had a very good meeting with China. Seems that I mean, they're going to brief me tomorrow. Will either approve it or not. But he felt very good about the meeting. Better than he felt yesterday.

Yesterday, I said, oh, here we go again. Here we go again. But today it worked out.

(END VIDEO CLIP) LEE: And for the first time, India has overtaken China as the number one exporter of smartphones to the U.S. The surge in exports is due largely to tech giant Apple shifting its manufacturing away from China in favor of India, given the uncertainty with the U.S. trade policy. More details now from CNN's Clare Duffy.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CLARE DUFFY, CNN TECH REPORTER: India's smartphone making industry has gotten a huge boost, mainly from Apple shifting production of its iPhones there and away from China. This is a trend that's been happening for the past few years but has really accelerated this year because of the higher cost of tariffs on goods imported from China.

Apple CEO Tim Cook said back in May that the majority of iPhones sold in the United States would now be coming from India.

And this new report from the market research firm Canalys really underscores the effects of that shift. It finds that Indian made devices now account for 44 percent of smartphones that were imported into the United States during the second quarter. That's up from just 13 percent in the same period in the prior year.

And meanwhile, devices assembled in China account for 25 percent of the smartphones that were sold in the United States. So about half of India's share.

I will say, though, that Apple is still deeply dependent on China for many of the components that are going into its iPhones, even if they're being assembled in India.

And I also think this is interesting. You're seeing how Trump's tariff policies are starting to play out. While the president may be hoping that tech companies will bring their manufacturing back to the United States, in many cases, we're just seeing them shift their manufacturing to other countries.

[04:25:00]

I will say, too, that while Apple may be now avoiding tariffs on goods imported from China, it might not be out of the woods yet. President Trump said on Tuesday that he is considering a tariff up to 25 percent on goods imported from India if the two countries cannot reach a trade agreement.

Clare Duffy, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LEE: With just hours to go before the Trump administration is set to impose a 50 percent tariff on Brazilian exports, the country's finance minister says Brazil hopes to negotiate with Washington. But Fernando Haddad tells CNN his country needs assurances that President Luis Ignacio Lula da Silva will not face a dressing down from Donald Trump like Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy did during his February Oval Office visit. Trump has linked the high tariffs to Brazil's treatment of former

President Jair Bolsonaro, who was on trial for allegedly plotting a coup to stop Lula from taking office.

And one of the largest household goods corporations in the U.S. says it will be raising prices on some of its products thanks to the Trump administration's trade war. Procter & Gamble, the maker of Tide detergent and Charmin toilet paper, says its profits will take a one billion dollar hit from Donald Trump's tariffs. In an earnings call, the company said it would raise prices of a quarter of its U.S. products starting in August.

A manhunt is heating up for the killer of a married couple hiking in Arkansas. On Tuesday, state police released a photograph showing the back of a man they are calling a person of interest. Earlier, they put out a sketch and are asking anyone nearby at the time to check their photos and videos for possible images of the person they want to question in connection with the deaths of the hikers.

They were killed while walking with their two young daughters at a state park in the Ozark Mountains. The girls were unharmed and are with family members.

A multi-faith prayer vigil was held in New York Tuesday for the four people killed in the Manhattan skyscraper shooting. New York Governor Kathy Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams were among those in attendance.

While authorities learned of the government's grievances against the NFL and its handling of the brain disease CTE, they still want to know more about his motive. CNN's Jason Carroll has the latest on their search for answers in the government's hometown of Las Vegas.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JASON CARROLL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Police thousands of miles away from the Manhattan crime scene positioned outside the shooter's Las Vegas home. As investigators try to learn as much as they can about Shane Tamura and his motive for carrying out the deadly attack. The New York Police Department is sending two teams to Las Vegas.

JESSICA TISCH, NEW YORK CITY POLICE COMMISSIONER: To conduct interviews and execute a search warrant at Mr. Tomorrow's home. They'll also visit the gun store where he legally purchased a revolver on June 12th using a Nevada concealed carry permit.

CARROLL (voice over): Neighbors outside the suspect's home stunned to hear about what had happened.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's not something you really expect to see, so, yes, it's a real shock.

CARROLL (voice over): The 27-year-old worked here at the Horseshoe Casino as a surveillance Department employee.

Police have uncovered some of his movements in the days before the shooting. He left Las Vegas in his black BMW on July 26th, he traveled through Colorado. The next day, Nebraska and Iowa, then on Monday, July 28th at 4:24 p.m., he was in Columbia, New Jersey before he entered New York City.

TISCH: Surveillance video shows a male exit a double parked black BMW on Park Avenue between 51st and 52nd streets, carrying an M4 rifle in his right hand.

CARROLL (voice over): As for his intended target. The early investigation suggests Tamura was headed to NFL headquarters at 345 Park Avenue but used the wrong elevator bank.

These pictures obtained by CNN show some of what investigators found inside his car, including a nylon rifle case and a Ziploc bag filled with ammunition. Police also recovered a revolver and Zoloft and antidepressant medication.

TISCH: According to our law enforcement partners in Las Vegas, Mr. Tamura has a documented mental health history.

CARROLL (voice over): Police found a suicide note in his back pocket where he alleges he suffered from CTE, a brain disease linked to repeated head trauma. The note saying, in part, you can't go against the NFL. They'll squash you, adding, study my brain, please.

Tamura did not play in the NFL. He was once a promising high school football player in Southern California, described by a coach in a 2013 local newspaper article as lightning in a bottle. Studies have shown CTE in former football players, though it is more common in pro athletes.

ERIC ADAMS, (D) NEW YORK CITY MAYOR: The motives appear to be connected to the shooter's belief that he was suffering from CTE and he was an ex NFL player, those items just don't pan out. He never played for the NFL, and so we're still unraveling this terrible shooting that took place in the city.

CARROLL (voice over): Jason Carroll, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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