"we're going to get back to the search for the missing plane in just a moment. first, i have developing news to tell you out of washington state. we're awaiting the press conference on that landslide. we know so far 17 people have died. that's confirmed by officials. at least 9 o still unaccounted for. we're keeping our eye on this press conference to get the very latest for you. any news that comes out of that, we'll bring it to you right here on cnn. so stand by for that. also, of course, we're following the missing plane. everyone searching for the missing airliner hoping sunday is different. here are the latest developments. search planes are at it again. they're in the air. it's confirmed by cnn just a short time ago. they're taking off from perth, australia, to begin scanning for plane wreckage 1,100 miles out. there is a problem and that's the weather. clouds are low. it is raining. the forecast shows no improvement. that's not good for visual searching. overnight in the darkness, a chinese navy found something floating in the ocean. they scooped up some objects. we don't know what they are yet. we done know if they're connected to that flight.

more than three weeks since flight 370 vanished, a number of rock-solid crews, still remains now at zero. let's get to atika shubert, shall we, standing by live in perth on the west coast of australia. atika, from what you have seen, how many planes are in the air now and how big of a concern is the weather? >> reporter: the weather is always going to be a big concern. as you point out, with the low clouds hanging over, it's going to be very hard to see any potential debris. but that's not stopping the search. there are already four planes up in the air. the chinese aleutian should be reaching if not already in the search area. and the u.s. p-8 poseidon should be there as well. there are two p-3s up in the air. these are all critical planes because they can use their special radar and fly very low to really eyeball the sea and see what kind of potential debris is out there. so the planes keep going. i think, actually, here at perth air base, we may have heard

another p-3 getting ready to take off as well. there will be a total of ten planes in the sky today. one of them a commercial jet. they'll have a lot more time to search. so hopefully they'll get good leads today, don. >> you know, these objects that the chinese found in the water before the sun came up, what do you know about them? what can you tell us about them, atika? >> reporter: we don't know exactly what they are, but what we understand is they're not -- they are not from the plane at this point. so they could be anything, you know, tossed out of a container ship or fishing vessel. they found a fishing buoy a few days ago. what it means is the ship continues to move on, chase after other objects that have already been sighted. this is a critical part of the process. they have to physically haul that object in to check whether or not it comes from the plane. so for they haven't found it, but the more space they can cover, the more objects they can find, the better the chances are. >> atika shubert, we appreciate

that. some families say malaysian authorities are restricting their movements and trying to ban them from some briefings. senior international correspondent sara sidner spoke with outraged families in kuala lumpur. >> reporter: for weeks, malaysian airlines representatives in kuala lumpur have been overtly protective of the families of those aboard flight mh-370, shielding them from everything including the media. the families initially appreciated it, but some of the family members from china now say malaysian airlines staff have gone too far, making them feel more like captives than guests in their hotels. >> translator: i just wanted to come and meet the minister and meet other family members, but i wasn't allowed to leave. and they wouldn't arrange transportation. they wouldn't even let me take the taxi. i lost my freedom.

>> reporter: tempers flared saturday when the mandarin speaking folks of this hotel said they could not attend a briefing for the malaysian families. most are housed in separate hotels and have separate briefings in their native languages. waiting for details of their loves ones has been excruciating. with no briefing in mandarin, the chinese families asked if they could attend the malaysian briefing. the answer was no. the chinese families even tried to hail a cab and were stopped from doing that, too. about an hour later, after some arguing, malaysian airlines finally offered to take them to the briefing. but when they arrived at the everley hotel, the chinese foams were not allowed into the briefing and told to wait in the room next door. with frustrations boiling over, malaysian officials came to them. this was video taken from inside the meeting as chinese families met with the ceo of malaysian airlines, a translator, the transportation minister, and his

wife. a pregnant woman whose husband is missing begins by asking authorities if they will search as long as it takes. >> can you give her the assurance. >> i promise her i will do everything within our power. >> translator: let's say if he's injured, at least i can see him. now he's not here. he went missing. it's been so many days and there isn't any evidence. >> reporter: she is considerated by the wife of a malaysian transportation minister, but she reminds malaysian officials that this is not the time to make the families' lives more difficultfy by restrict their movements. >> translator: please tell the staff not to regulate our families' movements. we cannot handle another shock. please let them be free. >> reporter: already prisoners of their circumstance, the families say all they want is the truth. sara sidner, cnn, kuala lumpur. >> thank you very much.

make sure you stay with cnn. just about 25 minutes, we're going to have a program called "flight 370: the final hours." a half hour special that takes a detailed look into what we know about the flight's last hours. again, tonight, 9:30, just a few minutes, right here on cnn. my panel is going to weigh in in just a moment. they're going to join us right after this quick break. we have developing news for you as well out of washington.

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this just into cnn. as i said, we have developing news out of washington. washington state. the death toll in that landslide. we are told by an emergency management official has now gone up from 17 to 19. specifically he said they have identified 18 victims and 1 other victim yet to be identified. still about 9 o people unaccounted for. but the death toll in that landslide in washington state gone up from 17 to 19. we'll continue to update you on that. also, we're updating you now on the missing plane. so search crews back up in the air now, and we know that they also found some objects in the ocean. chinese search crew found objects in the ocean. they are examining them now.

don't know if it is connected to flight 370. i want to bring in my panel of experts, conservation biologist, marine debris specialist nick malles. mark dombroff and pilot les abens. and pilot miles o'brien. nick, i want to start with you. are you surprised they haven't found any plane debris yet or anything that is solid evidence? >> not really. we forget that the ocean is a massive, massive expanse, and particularly as we're seeing from the imagery that has surfaced in the past few days, even when we have planes flying at low-lying altitudes and boats on the water, it's incredibly difficult to identify floating debris. debris. excuse me. and when you add in the variables like the stormy weather and winds which has the potential to move debris around and push it below the surface, it makes for a very complex environment where identifying and getting visual documentation

on these floating items very, very difficult. >> okay. miles, i think nick brings up a very good point, and if we do have -- if we have any sort of animation that can show the ocean, the indian ocean. you look at the size of asia, the size of africa, the size of australia there. you can fit almost all of them into the indian ocean. then you sort of get the idea of just how big an expanse this is. when it takes you four or five hours to fly to a search zone that's not even in the middle of the indian ocean. i think that sort of gives you the idea of what they're up against and how big this is. people are saying, why can't they find it? i try to tell them, do you have any idea how vast this ocean is? and that's covering the top. and then you're talking about two, three miles below the surface as well as a possibility. >> yeah, it's a multidimensional problem that is -- it's really hard for us to wrap our brains around it. the earth is 80% ocean.

think of all the landmass that we're familiar with, and that's only 20% of the earth. so, you know, when you think about searching, we keep using that needle in a haystack expression, but, sure, that would be easy. needle in a haystack. this is -- this is a huge task, and, you know, basically the search zone has been identified by a means that never intended to be used that way. it was very clever. we just don't know how accurate it might be. so couple that with mother nature and the fall is upon us and the sea state is a difficult thing. you know, we're starting to stack up the odds here. aren't we? >> yeah. we certainly are. les, the type of debris they find obviously depends on the impact. >> true. i mean, the higher speed the impact, the more fragments there will be. slower speed, as in air france, the more bigger pieces you're going to find. >> yeah. it's so interesting that, you know, for three weeks we've been

talking about the unknown. there are just so many different possibilities here. different possibilities. there's a lot of manpower going into this. a lot of money as well. most people are not concerned about the money. obviously the families aren't concerned about it. this is more than money. what if the airline -- what is the airline obligated to do when it comes to medical and psychological help for the relatives, mark? >> well, don, i think that certainly from all the reports i've seen and heard, the airline is providing grief counseling, psychological-type counseling. counselors to support them. malaysia airlines is a sophisticated international carrier. it's not to say they haven't made missteps here. i think almost any carrier in this sort of position with this sort of situation might make missteps. they operate into los angeles. they have on file with the u.s. department of transportation certain family assistance act assurances. they certainly understand how to deal with these situations.

and all the reports that i've read have indicated that they've responded with both personnel and with offers of interim payments and so forth. but, again, as i think i earlier indicated in a prior segment, what the families want is information, and the airline, quite frankly, is no better off than anybody else in terms of providing that information. and they, in some respects, and many respects, are victims of misinformation that's coming from the government. >> miles, can we talk about -- we mentioned the expanse of this ocean. i mean, les abend obviously knows, he's flown long flights over water, just how big it is. there's been lots of questions about aircraft carriers. that would certainly help out in this particular situation. what do you know about that, miles? >> what got me interested on this, i got interested in the search of amelia aheart. so i started thinking about that. and how that might be applied

here. the carrier "george washington" based in japan could be on site there in about a week. and the day, the admiral who's the spokesperson for the defense department, admiral kirby was here, sort of cornered him in the hall and asked him about this. he said, number one, the aircraft carrier is tasked. number two, it was his contention it really wouldn't do much good. i'm not sure i follow that logic. that would mean additional aircraft on site. there wouldn't be the range issues we're talking about because you can put it right in the middle of the search zone. you'd have helicopters. the carrier aircraft are not ideally suited for search missions like the p-8 or p-3 is which is land based. it's still more eyeballs on target. the c-2s and e-2s each have a 1,500 mile range so they really could cover some turf. given the fact we just talked about all the odds that are up against this search, the size of the search area, the weather, the fact that winter is coming,

why not send the carrier down? i think, you know, if the u.s. navy was asked by the malaysians, i suspect they'd do it. >> you know, it is called an auv and it could be the technology that makes a difference in the search for flight 370. rosa flores joins me next with an inside look at the unmanned underwater probe that could be used to locate objects deep on the ocean floor. [ male announcer ] this is the cat that drank the milk... [ meows ] ...and let in the dog that woke the man who drove to the control room [ woman ] driverless mode engaged. find parking space. [ woman ] parking space found. [ male announcer ] ...that secured the data that directed the turbines that powered the farm that made the milk that went to the store that reminded the man to buy the milk that was poured by the girl who loved the cat. [ meows ] the internet of everything is changing everything. cisco. tomorrow starts here. the internet of everything hey there cashhhhhhp you?ng. (whispering) sorry hi, uh we need a new family plan. how about 10 gigs of data to share and unlimited talk and text.

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when a likely crash site for malaysia airlines flight 370 is identified the next step will be to send sophisticated pieces of equipment to the ocean bottom. rosa flores explains how an expensive machine can help map the debris field. >> auvs, autonomous underwater vehicles. look like little probes, little missiles, if you will. they dive deep into the ocean several miles and start creating a map of the ocean floor. how do they do that? they use side scan sonar and scan the ocean floor looking for oddities, don, in the case of mh-370, of course, we are looking for anything that is not natural to the ocean floor. we are looking for plane wreckage. here's one of the very important things about this technology.

it's able to produce a preliminary picture of the ocean floor realtime. as soon as this probe is able to go miles deep into the ocean. once the probe finishes its mission, then it comes back to shore. it's connected to a computer. and it is actually able to produce a high-resolution picture of the ocean floor. what you're looking at is the deployment of a probe that's owned by cnc technologies in louisiana. and you'll see that it gets deployed into the water. that's what it normally does. and once it gets into the water, that's when crew, in a control room, input and program the mission for this particular probe. one of the other thing that's very important about this particular probe, don, is that you know how we've been talking about the ping and, oh, are we going to run out of time? >> right. can this help with that if it does run out? >> because this particular probe is so customized, i talked to the owner about it, he says he's able to add a pinger locator to this particular device. so, for example, if this were

deployed, it would be able to a scan, soen scan, sonar scan of ocean floor, create a map and look for the ping at the same time. >> rosa, appreciate it. we'll be right back. save you fifteen percent or more on car insurance.d everybody knows that. well, did you know pinocchio was a bad motivational speaker? i look around this room and i see nothing but untapped potential.

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hunt for malaysia airlines flight 370 on a new chapter. ten search planes set to take off soon in perth, australia. as a matter of fact, some are in the air right now. more on this in a little bit. first, there is a tdevelopig story out of california, multiple earthquakes in a 24-hour period. one of several aftershocks to the big one last night, a 5.1 near the orange county city of el habra. stephanie e labjoins me now. the first one was the aftershock

this morning, right? >> yeah. let me tell you about last night's. last night's you definitely felt. that came in in the morning. it was a rolling earthquake as opposed to -- at least where i live, as opposed to the one on st. patrick's day in the morning which was a nice, sharp jolt. this one rolling through but definitely having some damage it did cause. we have some rocks that fell on a road, broken bottles, broken vases, broken glass, that sort of thing. then we had 100, about, earthquakes. i was watching it on twitter. earthquakes reported. they were small 1 or 2 pointers. there were definitely a bunch of earthquakes after that. reportedly aftershocks. he had th we had this 4.2 earthquake today, the cause of that, in the town of fullerton, south of where i am in l.a., they did have to red tag some apartment buildings, but they did go ahead and clear those apartment buildings. six of the houses that were red tagged, those still remain red tagged. so that's displacing about 23 people, the fire chief has been e-mailing me about that.

so there has been some damage. but overall, this one was not as damaging as other earthquakes we've seen out here. think about the northridge earthquake which was 6 point something, 6.7 on that one which was in 1994. then you also have the loma earthquake which was in san francisco that was a 7.1. when it comes to california, i'm hearing numbers, things in the 6s and 7s, really gets scary. overall, people should be repaired. >> stephanie elam. off the beach. no time for doing your hair up. >> i don't do nigh hair on saturday. >> we appreciate you coming in. thank you, steph. appreciate that. let's get back to the missing flight 370. our final thoughts. i want to turn to our panelists. nick, you first. what questions would you like answered in this investigation? >> i'm not sure if it's a question that needs to be answered, but i do think because of the difficulty of this search and rescue mission, as we've

seen visual and aerial imagery, alone, will not suffice to determine whether or not these items are from the wreckage of the malaysian flight. i think to the extent possible that more vessels and more debris items can be recovered and then either identified or basically determined to not be part of the malaysian wreckage, i think will expedite this process and potentially narrow down the search area. >> mark? >> well, i guess, don, looking at the question of the investigation, itself, as it moves forward, irrespective and hopefully we're going to find the airplane and get the answers. but irrespective of whether the aircraft is located or not. the question i guess i would like answered is what is the malaysian government and the malaysian accident investigation authorities going to do to see to it that the mistakes that we have all seen out there are not repeated in terms of communication of information, in terms of the families?

in terms of the crew members, in terms of the cockpit crew members. i think that's something that people better address right now, irrespective of how this continues to unfold. >> very good point. les abend? >> i'd like to see more information with regard to the radar data when it comes to direction of flight and especially altitude. i think some of the assumptions on where the search area has gone, i'm not clear on that. >> more on the radar data. >> more on radar data. >> especially when it pertains to altitude. >> okay. miles o'brien? >> i totally agree with les. we need radar data. we want to line that up with the altitude as best we know it and want to overlay that with the air traffic control communications which we still haven't heard. then i'd like to see the maintenance records of that aircraft and like to know a little bit about those pilots, what it was like, the ten pilots that flew with them on previous flights? did they know anything or see anything that was at all suspicious?

>> very good points. listen, there is so much to go over here. we have learned a lot of new information today. it feels like because we've been covering this for three weeks that nothing concrete has been learned. they've not pulled anything out of the ocean that they are for sure is part of flight 370. but, again, we have learned that they are getting things that may be related to that. the families are wanting answers. the families are walking out of -- walked out of one press conference. we're hearing from family members more now. they're wanting to get in front of cameras because they want their voices heard. and we're learning new information about radar data. maybe not enough. about the safety of that airplane. maybe not enough. we are learning collectively all of us here in the united states and around the country those of us who are tuned in to cnn around the country more about aviation than we have learned probably over the course of our lives. especially being in that simulator with our reporter over the past couple weeks. from all of our analysts and experts here on cnn. we have to keep top of mind the

239 people onboard that plane and their family members who are in grief now and have no finality to this situation. that's why we continue to cover this and will until we find something out to help those families. i'm don lemon. cnn special report "flight 370: the final hours" begins right now. the following is a cnn special report. >> a high-tech aircraft. an experienced crew. and 227 passengers. what began as a routine flight for malaysia airlines 370 became the total opposite. leaving behind unending grief and unanswered questions. "flight 370: the final hours."