--:-- [Theme music fades out]
--:-- Leila Fadel: The head of Boeing was grilled on the hill about safety practices in two fatal crashes of 737 MAX planes.
--:-- Leila Fadel: I apologize for the grief that we have caused. The families who lost loved ones say an apology isn't enough.
--:-- Leila Fadel: I'm A. Martinez, that's Leila Fadel, and this is Up First from NPR News.
--:-- Leila Fadel: New Mexico's governor declares a state of emergency as two wildfires force the evacuation of thousands.
--:-- Leila Fadel: The message to New Mexicans is that every resource available while we combat these fires is available.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Does the state have what it needs?
--:-- Leila Fadel: And one of the country's largest health systems is still recovering from a massive cyber attack that caused dangerous mix-ups and serious complications with patient care.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Stay with us. We'll give you the news you need to start your day.
--:-- Leila Fadel: This message comes from BetterHelp.
--:-- Dave Calhoun: President Fernando Madeira describes how BetterHelp Online Therapy has helped him.
--:-- Dave Calhoun: For me, sometimes I just need to go and talk to somebody that is not going to judge me, right?
--:-- Dave Calhoun: It's going to be there and they're going to listen to me.
--:-- Dave Calhoun: And I can start just saying, look, I'm not feeling right today.
--:-- Dave Calhoun: And it feels natural.
--:-- Dave Calhoun: I love it.
--:-- Leila Fadel: To get matched with a therapist, visit BetterHelp.com slash NPR for 10% off your first month.
--:-- Leila Fadel: This message comes from NPR sponsor AARP.
--:-- AARP Representative: Where do you see your career in 12 years?
--:-- AARP Representative: What are you doing now to help you get there?
--:-- AARP Representative: The sooner you start enhancing your skills, the sooner you'll be ready.
--:-- AARP Representative: That's why AARP has management, finance, and small business reskilling courses, all to help your income live as long as you do.
--:-- AARP Representative: Because the steps you choose to take today will help you love what you do in the future.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Learn more at aarp.org slash skills.
--:-- [Music transitions]
--:-- Leila Fadel: The head of troubled planemaker Boeing was questioned pretty aggressively on Capitol Hill yesterday.
--:-- Leila Fadel: CEO Dave Calhoun testified in public for the first time since a door plug panel blew out of a 737 MAX jet in midair.
--:-- Leila Fadel: That incident renewed deep concerns about Boeing's focus on quality control and safety.
--:-- Leila Fadel: NPR's Joel Rose has been following all of this and joins us now.
--:-- Joel Rose: Good morning, Leila.
--:-- Leila Fadel: So this hearing has been a long time coming.
--:-- Joel Rose: It started with a dramatic moment.
--:-- Joel Rose: Before his prepared remarks, Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun turned around to face the gallery in the hearing room.
--:-- Joel Rose: And he offered an apology to the families of people who were killed in the crashes of two Boeing 737 MAX jets in 2018 and 2019.
--:-- Joel Rose: They killed 346 people in total.
--:-- Joel Rose: Some of those family members were in the room yesterday when Calhoun testified, holding up photographs of loved ones who died in the crashes.
--:-- Joel Rose: And many still want to see Boeing's leaders held accountable.
--:-- Joel Rose: Nadia Milleron lost her daughter, Samya Stumo, in the crash.
--:-- Joel Rose: She spoke to reporters before the hearing, and she said she believes Boeing and Calhoun are still putting profits ahead of safety.
--:-- Joel Rose: When they get pressed for time and they need to produce a lot of planes quickly, they throw all of their safety rubrics out the window.
--:-- Joel Rose: So it isn't about what he has in place.
--:-- Joel Rose: He does have everything in place.
--:-- Joel Rose: He just doesn't follow it.
--:-- Leila Fadel: So what did Boeing's CEO have to say?
--:-- Joel Rose: Well, Calhoun said Boeing has heard these concerns about its safety culture, quote, loud and clear.
--:-- Joel Rose: He talked about the detailed action plan that Boeing has given federal regulators, how it has slowed production of the 737,
--:-- Joel Rose: and other steps that the company is taking to try to shore up quality at its own factories and at its suppliers.
--:-- Joel Rose: Calhoun also talked about the loss of veteran employees during the COVID-19 pandemic.
--:-- Joel Rose: He said that loss of experience has really hurt Boeing and its suppliers
--:-- Joel Rose: We turned over a lot of people and yes a lot of experienced people
--:-- Joel Rose: Our supply chain experienced enormous turnover
--:-- Joel Rose: So much of this relates to an untrained workforce
--:-- Joel Rose: I tell you it all about that honestly.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Calhoun said the company is trying to ramp up training to get younger employees up to speed.
--:-- Joel Rose: Calhoun is himself leaving his job at the end of this year.
--:-- Joel Rose: No word yet on who will replace him as CEO.
--:-- Leila Fadel: And how did senators react?
--:-- Joel Rose: Senators were very skeptical of Calhoun, I think, on both sides of the aisle.
--:-- Joel Rose: They noted that Calhoun himself has gotten a big raise, while most of his Boeing workforce has not.
--:-- Joel Rose: Here's Josh Hawley, a Republican senator from Missouri.
--:-- Josh Hawley: I don't think the problem's with the employees.
--:-- Josh Hawley: It's the C-suite.
--:-- Josh Hawley: It's the management.
--:-- Josh Hawley: It's what you've done to this company.
--:-- Josh Hawley: That's where the problem is.
--:-- Josh Hawley: The problem's at the top.
--:-- Josh Hawley: And I just hope to God that you don't destroy this company before it can be saved.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Senators also noted that Boeing's leaders have said a lot of these things before, after those two previous MAX crashes.
--:-- Joel Rose: Senators said they wanted to see fewer promises and more action from the company.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Now, Boeing could still face criminal prosecution.
--:-- Joel Rose: This goes back to those crashes of two 737 MAX jets more than five years ago.
--:-- Joel Rose: Boeing struck a deal with the Justice Department to avoid prosecution for misleading regulators about the safety of those planes.
--:-- Joel Rose: Basically, the company was put on probation for three years.
--:-- Joel Rose: Family members of the crash victims have long criticized that as a sweetheart deal, and they want to see Boeing's leaders held accountable.
--:-- Joel Rose: Federal prosecutors now say Boeing has not held up its end of that deal.
--:-- Joel Rose: They are expected to announce soon what they're going to do next, whether they will take Boeing to court or just extend its probation.
--:-- Leila Fadel: That's NPR transportation correspondent Joel Rose.
--:-- Joel Rose: Thank you, Leila.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Two fast-growing wildfires have upended the lives of thousands of people near Ruidoso, New Mexico.
--:-- Leila Fadel: The village of about 7,000 people remains completely evacuated, and the deadly fires have already burned more than 20,000 acres in just a day.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Casey Counts with member station KRWG in Las Cruces is watching the fires closely.
--:-- Casey Counts: So, Casey, how do these fires start and what's the local response been there?
--:-- Casey Counts: Well, good morning.
--:-- Leila Fadel: The cause is still under investigation, but these fires grew so very fast.
--:-- Casey Counts: There was air support almost immediately, but we had some 20 to 25 mile per hour winds that are always a challenge for firefighters.
--:-- Casey Counts: Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham gave an update to New Mexicans during a news conference yesterday.
--:-- Casey Counts: More than 17 agencies are on the ground working together, both federal and state.
--:-- Casey Counts: More than 800 personnel are on the ground providing services, acting as first responders and battling the fire.
--:-- Casey Counts: Now, Monday, authorities ate an evacuation for all of Ruidoso and several surrounding areas by late afternoon.
--:-- Casey Counts: Yesterday, another 2,600 people were told to leave the community of Ruidoso Downs.
--:-- Casey Counts: Initial response to the fires was from the Mescalero Apache tribe, on whose land it was first discovered.
--:-- Casey Counts: Yesterday, they called in a lot more help.
--:-- Casey Counts: A federal incident management team has arrived.
--:-- Casey Counts: They'll be taking charge of the fire starting this morning.
--:-- Casey Counts: Yeah, winds make things really difficult to contain and also very dangerous.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Do we know how many homes have burned and if anyone has been injured or killed?
--:-- Casey Counts: Well, Governor Lujan Grisham said one person has died.
--:-- Casey Counts: We don't have confirmed reports of other deaths or serious injuries at this time, and we don't know anything about that person who has lost their life.
--:-- Casey Counts: We do know about 7,000 people in and around Ruidoso are still evacuated.
--:-- Casey Counts: The State Forestry Division has said about 1,400 structures have been lost.
--:-- Casey Counts: Now, that's an update by last night.
--:-- Casey Counts: Earlier in the day, it was 500 structures.
--:-- Casey Counts: So you can just see how quickly things are changing there.
--:-- Casey Counts: It's unclear at this point how many of those are homes versus businesses.
--:-- Casey Counts: We seen pictures and videos circulating that appear to show homes and some well businesses that are destroyed
--:-- Casey Counts: So you in Las Cruces That about two hours from the fire
--:-- Casey Counts: But I understand that you have property in Ruidoso
--:-- Casey Counts: What's that town like, and what are you hearing from people who've had to evacuate?
--:-- Casey Counts: Yeah, it's a resort town.
--:-- Casey Counts: So it's a cool place at 7,000 feet in elevation where people from all over New Mexico and Texas go to cool off from the triple-digit heat in the summertime.
--:-- Casey Counts: And, of course, it's surrounded by pine forests.
--:-- Casey Counts: There's a ski area, and the Mescalero Apache tribe operates that, as well as a couple of popular casinos.
--:-- Casey Counts: There's also a horse racing track in Ruidoso Downs.
--:-- Casey Counts: We have our property there.
--:-- Casey Counts: Our tenant, who rents our home full-time, got out safely, but she shared some video with me through the Facebook Messenger app.
--:-- Casey Counts: There was just fire on all sides.
--:-- Casey Counts: It was terrifying.
--:-- Casey Counts: And people are just feeling really anxious to get more information now at this point.
--:-- Casey Counts: Oh, of course.
--:-- Casey Counts: I mean, they feel cut off like any other person would be in a fire like that.
--:-- Leila Fadel: What's the outlook for the fire today?
--:-- Casey Counts: Yeah, there's some good news weather-wise.
--:-- Casey Counts: There's some rain chances for the rest of the week, really strong ones.
--:-- Casey Counts: But of course, that could bring the possibility of lightning with these scattered thunderstorms.
--:-- Casey Counts: So by tomorrow, we're starting to see some really healthy rain chances.
--:-- Casey Counts: That will be a huge help.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Casey Counts is with member station KRWG in Las Cruces, New Mexico.
--:-- Casey Counts: Thanks.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Ascension, one of the country's largest health systems, has been dealing with the effects of a ransomware attack for more than a month.
--:-- Leila Fadel: The Catholic health system runs 140 hospitals and other facilities in 18 states and Washington, D.C.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Doctors and nurses say patients have been put at risk.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Kate Wells of member station Michigan Public is joining us from Ann Arbor, Michigan.
--:-- Kate Wells: She's been reporting on the national impact of this with Rachana Pradhan of KFF Health News.
--:-- Kate Wells: Hi, Leila.
--:-- Leila Fadel: So the cyber attack started on May 8th.
--:-- Kate Wells: How has it disrupted care?
--:-- Kate Wells: Yeah, so for weeks, it took out all the hospitals' access to electronic health records and basically every system that Ascension uses to do everything from tracking patients to ordering labs and tests to just making sure that the right medication goes to the right patient.
--:-- Kate Wells: And right now, things have gotten better.
--:-- Kate Wells: Gradually, Ascension says it's been able to restore access to things like electronic health records, but the staff that we've been talking to say things are not fully back to normal yet.
--:-- Kate Wells: There's still glitches and delays.
--:-- Leila Fadel: So tell me more about what the staff has been telling you.
--:-- Kate Wells: You and Rachana talked with nurses and doctors in three states about what happened to patients during the first few weeks of the cyber attack.
--:-- Kate Wells: What did they say?
--:-- Kate Wells: Yeah, the staff that I talked to were genuinely worried about their patient safety.
--:-- Kate Wells: I talked with a dozen doctors and nurses here in Michigan.
--:-- Kate Wells: And across the board, they described numerous close calls, when the wrong medications would be ordered, when labs would just get lost, when patients were being tracked with sticky notes or Google Docs.
--:-- Kate Wells: An Ascension Hospital ER doctor that I talked to in Detroit said one of their patients was given a dangerous narcotic that was intended for another patient because of a paperwork mix-up.
--:-- Kate Wells: And that patient who got the wrong meds had to be put on a ventilator because of that and sent to the ICU.
--:-- Kate Wells: An ER nurse at the same hospital in Detroit told me about a patient of theirs who died.
--:-- Kate Wells: This was a woman who came in and she went into cardiac arrest after staff had waited for four hours for these labs that they urgently needed to figure out how to treat her and they just never received.
--:-- Kate Wells: The nurse told me at the time in May, they said, if I started having crushing chest pain in the middle of work and I thought I was having a big one, I would grab someone to drive me to another hospital down the street.
--:-- Leila Fadel: What's Ascension saying?
--:-- Kate Wells: So we ran all of these examples past Ascension, and they declined to comment on them.
--:-- Kate Wells: But they did tell us in an email quote we are confident that our care providers and our hospitals and facilities continue to provide quality medical care
--:-- Kate Wells: They had said in an earlier statement that their staff was quote trained for these kinds of disruptions
--:-- Kate Wells: But we spoke with experts who said, you know, this is beyond what most hospitals are probably prepared for.
--:-- Kate Wells: I talked with John Clark.
--:-- Kate Wells: He's an associate chief of pharmacy at the University of Michigan Health System.
--:-- Kate Wells: And he says, look, his health system can handle six to eight hours of downtime, no problem.
--:-- Kate Wells: And they've got emergency plans on the books for like two to three days.
--:-- Kate Wells: But at Ascension, these systems were down for weeks.
--:-- Kate Wells: I don't believe that anyone is fully prepared for a long-term process like this.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Yeah, and we've been seeing more and more of these massive cyber attacks in healthcare in the last few years.
--:-- Kate Wells: Why is that?
--:-- Kate Wells: Well, ransomware attackers have figured out that the health sector is kind of like the perfect prey here, right?
--:-- Kate Wells: They may not have the most secure systems.
--:-- Kate Wells: They're big businesses with a lot of revenue.
--:-- Kate Wells: And the stakes are really high for them, right?
--:-- Kate Wells: They've got these patients' lives on the line.
--:-- Leila Fadel: So what we're watching in real time here is the hospital industry and also regulators try to catch up with what's been happening.
--:-- Kate Wells: That's Kate Wells with Michigan Public joining us from Ann Arbor, Michigan.
--:-- Kate Wells: Thank you so much for your reporting, Kate.
--:-- Leila Fadel: We end today with the passing of baseball icon and Hall of Famer Willie Mays.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Many fans that saw him play in person will argue that he was the greatest and most exciting player in the sports history.
--:-- Leila Fadel: He had over 3,000 hits and more than 600 home runs with a batting average just over 300 in 23 big league seasons.
--:-- Leila Fadel: And while Mays was a force with a bat in his hands, he was also a graceful speedster with a glove while playing center field, making incredibly difficult plays look easy.
--:-- Leila Fadel: His most famous catch was in the 1954 World Series when he ran down a long fly ball to deep center off the bat of Cleveland slugger Vic Wertz at the Polo Grounds in New York.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Willie Mays just brought this crowd to its feet with a catch, which must have been an optical illusion to a lot of people.
--:-- Leila Fadel: That play came to be simply known as the catch.
--:-- Leila Fadel: I was lucky enough to meet Willie Mays when I was traveling with the Los Angeles Dodgers as their pre- and post-game show host.
--:-- Leila Fadel: We were at the Giants ballpark in San Francisco, and I nervously introduced myself, and my name caught his attention.
--:-- Leila Fadel: And it made him laugh because his nickname was the Say Hey Kid.
--:-- Leila Fadel: And I'm A. Martinez.
--:-- Leila Fadel: So it made him chuckle a little bit.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Willie Mays was 93 years old.
--:-- Leila Fadel: And that's a first for Wednesday, June 19th.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Happy Juneteenth, everyone.
--:-- Leila Fadel: I'm Leila Fadel.
--:-- Leila Fadel: And I'm A. Martinez.
--:-- Leila Fadel: For your next listen, how about try and consider this from NPR.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Vice President candidates are rarely a decisive force in elections.
--:-- Leila Fadel: But they can influence whether a nominee wins or loses.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Who will Donald Trump pick as his running mate?
--:-- Leila Fadel: Listen to Consider This.
--:-- Leila Fadel: And today's episode of Up First was edited by Russell Lewis, Eric Whitney, Diane Weber, Mohamed El-Berdisi, and Alice Wolfley.
--:-- Leila Fadel: It was produced by Ziad Butch, Christopher Thomas, and Taylor Haney.
--:-- Leila Fadel: We get engineering support from Carly Strange, and our technical director is Zach Coleman.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Join us again tomorrow.
--:-- [Theme music starts playing]
--:-- Leila Fadel: This message comes from ZipRecruiter.
--:-- ZipRecruiter Representative: Finding great candidates to hire can be like trying to find a needle in a haystack.
--:-- ZipRecruiter Representative: Unless you use ZipRecruiter.
--:-- ZipRecruiter Representative: ZipRecruiter doesn't depend on candidates finding you.
--:-- ZipRecruiter Representative: It finds them for you.
--:-- ZipRecruiter Representative: That's why 4 out of 5 employers who post a job on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day.
--:-- ZipRecruiter Representative: And right now, you can try ZipRecruiter for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash zip.
--:-- ZipRecruiter Representative: That's ZipRecruiter.com slash ZIP.
