time. who knew? abc s lisa stark has the latest. reporter: this could be the worst year for whooping cough in half a century. and now we may know why. a new study in the journal of the american medical association looked at cases amongst adolescents in australia. man who got sick received the near, safer vaccine for whooping cough introduced in the late 1990s. turns out the protection wears off. we are just now realizing exactly how long or, shall we say, how short the protection due to the vaccine we re now using actually is. reporter: when does protection diminish? around age 10. there is a spike in cases. booster shots are recommended at age 11 or 12. even those don t last. the u.s. is seeing a second wave of these highly contagious cases at age 13 and 14. this woman had her booster, but still got violently sick this winter. so did her mom. reporter: what got you
concerned? just the the escalation in the coughing and the the wheezing kind of cough. that didn t really stop until she was gasping for air. reporter: it takes to recover. health officials are working to understand the limits of the vaccine but say the is key line of defense and that a booster is critical for adolescents and adults. lisa stark, abc news, washington. in alaska, the coast guard to the rescue to two orphaned walrus calves. they were found malnourished and in desperate need of medical care, but there were no commercial flights. so the coast guard stepped in with an hc-130 hercules plane which flew the walrus babies to anchorage where they were taken by truck to alaska sea life center. they re going to be okay. off and on thunderstorms, east coast, storms, dakotas, wisconsin, and stormy in the southwest. with heavy downpours and flash
sally ride, america s first female astronaut, was 61 years old. gone too soon. ride was a trail blazer who changed the face of the space program. lisa stark worked with sally ride and has her story. good morning. reporter: when sally ride became an astronaut in 1978, it had been an all-male fraternity for nearly two decades. she and five women were part of the astronaut group that year and ride who had a ph.d. in physics drew the lucky straw. launching on the shuttle challenger in 1983. liftoff of sds 7 and america s first woman astronaut. i have to admit i am more excited about that opportunity than i am about, as you say, being a footnote in history. reporter: ride didn t think of herself as making history but later it was clear she inspired girls and women to go where no women had gone before. she had a second shuttle flight a year later. her third mission canceled after the challenger disaster.
those pieces, she was that woman was holding. they said that the pieces, the debris were just about the size of a cell phone. but as but enough to do that. we ve seen that big, as lisa pointed out, especially on world news there s like a large cargo door that had fallen onto that golf course. that s unbelievable. oh, man. what happens if that happens when they are like halfway over the pacific? whoever s car is damaged, i hope they charge the airline a hefty fee for that damage. turnabout is fair play. now we turn to another airline scare. this one involving a southwest jet. the pilot just took off from burbank to fly to vegas. that s when an unusual noise in the back of the plane forced the crew to abort the takeoff and return to the airport. the 737 landed with no further problems, thankfully. passengers were put on another flight. and two people died and another was hurt after two small planes collided in midair in rural northern virginia. the victims were the pi
does she have anything but floral in the closet? you ll see in a second. flowers are very important to that marriage. first, before all that, the details on the bizarre incident in the skies above toronto. pieces of an air canada jet literally fell to the earth smashing right into cars. now safety experts are trying to figure out what would cause such a dangerous situation. here s abc s lisa stark. reporter: the air canada boeing 777 was heading from toronto to japan. 318 passengers and 16 crew. after taking off, one of the engines shut down. and it appears pieces of the plane, possibly parts of that engine, fell off the jet plummeting into a nearby suburb. the metal parts smashing through the windshields of parked cars. their owners stunned. first thing i said, oh, my god, what is this? what is going on, right? have you ever seen anything like this before? no, first time in my life. reporter: up in the air, the