60 Minutes - 10/2/2022: Olena Zelenska, What Happened at Grizzly Flats, Captain Kolisi

Episode Date: October 3, 2022

On this edition of “60 Minutes,” Ukrainian First Lady Olena Zelenska sits down with Scott Pelley and describes what her country and people have been through in the months since Russia invaded. Bill Whitaker talks with a woman whose world went up in flames when the Caldor Fire ripped through her home. Jon Wertheim runs down the field with Siya Kolisi, the first black player ever to be named captain of the South African National Rugby team. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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you can count on the PC Insider's World Elite MasterCard to help you earn the most PC Optimum points everywhere you shop. The PC Insider's World Elite MasterCard, the card for living unlimited. Conditions apply to all benefits. Visit pcfinancial.ca for details. As Russia sets off a major escalation in Ukraine, you'll hear tonight from Ukraine's first lady, Olena Zelenska, about enduring a time of war. Half of our families are separated, she told us. People are afraid to leave their homes because of shelling. They're afraid even to try to evacuate. We have thousands of dead.

Hundreds of children are dead. Candace Tyler's world went up in flames on August 17th when the Kaldor fire tore out of the El Dorado National Forest and burned the family ranch to the ground. When you got hot embers raining down on you and your friends and family's houses are exploding and you're listening to it and there ain't nothing between here and them to stop yet, you know your fate. You might think of rugby players as human bumper cars, running forward, passing backward, and obliterating everything in the way.

This sport combines the collisions of football, minus pads, with the fluid continuity of basketball or hockey. It is, as the saying goes, a game for hooligans played by gentlemen. Sia Khaleesi is the first black player to be named captain of South Africa's national team. It might as well have been a political appointment in a country in need of repair. I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Sharon Alfonsi.

I'm John Wertheim. I'm Scott Whitaker. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Sharon Alfonsi. I'm John Wertheim. I'm Scott Pelley. Those stories, plus our new feature, The Last Minute, tonight on Hurricane Ian, on this edition of 60 Minutes. Wendy's most important deal of the day has a fresh lineup. Pick any two breakfast items for $4. New four-piece French toast sticks, bacon or sausage wrap, biscuit or English muffin sandwiches, small hot coffee, and more. Limited time only at participating Wendy's taxes extra.

When does fast grocery delivery through Instacart matter most? When your famous grainy mustard potato salad isn't so famous without the grainy mustard. When the barbecue's lit, but there's nothing to grill. When the in-laws decide that, actually, they will stay for dinner. Instacart has all your groceries covered this summer. So download the app and get delivery in as fast as 60 minutes. Plus, enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart. Groceries that over-deliver. In a major escalation of the war in Europe, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced Friday he is annexing about 20% of Ukraine. The region, in the east and in the south, is only partly controlled by Russia because of a Ukrainian counteroffensive. In a belligerent speech, Putin referred to nuclear weapons and accused the West of Satanism.

He vowed that the territory will be Russian forever. President Biden responded that the U.S. will never recognize the annexation and will support Ukraine's military as long as it takes. Seven months of war have been catastrophic for Ukrainian families, many of whom turned for hope to Olena Zelenska. The First Lady of Ukraine was trained as an architect, made a living as a comedy writer, but awoke last February to a tragedy. Overnight, she became an ambassador, a mourner,

and the healer of a nation fighting for its life. We met in the capital, Kiev, at a location we agreed not to disclose. The day of our interview, Ukraine was forcing a Russian retreat and exposing the horrors of the invasion. What have the families of Ukraine lost? Half our families are separated, she told us, because someone is at the front, someone went abroad to save their children, someone is under Russian occupation.

People are afraid to leave their homes because of shelling. They're afraid to even try to evacuate. We have thousands of dead. Hundreds of children are dead. We were just in Chernihiv. We saw the soccer stadium had been bombed, the library, a hospital, public school number 18, public school number 21. What are the Russians trying to do? They try to frighten people to make them run, to have towns and villages empty so they can occupy these territories.

Is it warfare or is it terrorism? Definitely terrorism. The war is being waged using modern means, but from the moral and ethical point of view, it's the Middle Ages. Olena Zalinska is 44 years old, married 19 years to her husband, President Volodymyr Zelensky. Their names differ because in Slavic languages, surnames are often modified by gender. When we spoke to her husband in early April, we found a way how to work. We don't have another way.

He told us his wife and two children were in hiding. But weeks later, he deployed his wife like a weapon. In May, she showed First Lady Jill Biden the wars homeless in western Ukraine. In July, she came to Washington and became the first First Lady to address the U.S. Congress. I'm asking for weapons, she said then, weapons that would not be used to wage war on somebody else's land, but to protect one's home and the right to wake up alive in that home. When we met, we noticed what seemed like a weariness she was determined to ignore.

It was the price of the path she'd chosen. To meet her people, know their pain, and bear the weight of empathy. We met a man in Bucha yesterday. He and his family were fleeing the Russian invasion. The Russians opened fire on his car. Il et sa famille étaient en train de fuir l'invasion russe. Les Russes ont ouvert le feu sur son voiture. Son pied a été détruit. La voiture a eu feu. Et il a vu sa femme et ses enfants se tuer.

Je trouve difficile d'exprimer l'énormité de ce qui se passe. Et je me demande comment vous exprimez le souffrance de vos gens. hard to express the enormity of what's happening. And I wonder how you express the suffering of your people. I feel like a part of these people. I feel as if this is my pain. The stories are terrifying, and we try to somehow help the survivors. You just told me this man in Bucha had lost his leg. Well, a girl, Sasha, lost her arm. Now she's in the United States. I started a program with the Ukraine House in Washington, and with many American philanthropists and American doctors and hospitals, we found an opportunity to give the girl an artificial prosthesis.

Wow! But every time she looks at her hands, she will see what she has lost. Sasha will always see what she lost in this war. The world has watched as Ukraine has lost entire cities. Nearly 500 hospitals and clinics have been hit. Schools are devastated. Mrs. Zelenska told us,

About 150 schools simply do not exist. About 900 schools have been damaged. We saw what she means in Chernihiv, about three hours north of Kiev. Public School 21 was used as a shelter when a Russian bomb struck. We asked some of those who were there to join us. Why would the Russians bomb a school? Inna Lebchenko, the school principal, told us, I thought it was a safe place for all of us. We even wrote the word children on the windows.

This is Principal Lebchenko, who lost vision in one eye. Natalia Horbach was sheltering with her two boys. My face and my ear were injured. My head and my right arm were cut with some fragments. A man came over and helped me up and took me to a car that drove us to the hospital. When he helped me stand up, I asked him about the... She couldn't quite say the word. Children. Children were wounded, but seven adults were killed.

Another bomb hit Valentina Vasilchenko's home. My grandson's heart was still beating. They were giving him medical assistance, but a lot of time was lost, and he died in the ambulance near the house. My granddaughter, her fiancé, my daughter's husband, and my mother were found dead in the rubble. Public School 21 in Chernihiv had 850 students. How are you educating the children of Ukraine today? Around 3,500 schools will operate online only because schools cannot receive students and because their parents are afraid to send their children to school.

Ukraine's children went to school this year and the first thing they learned is where the bomb shelter is, how to get there, and what to do in case a missile strikes. We will fight. We will not give our children up. I don't know how we can forgive this. I don't think we will. After the Russians severed communications with the occupied territories, Ukrainians dropped messages in the Dnipro River. With the current and against the chance,

they would reach those behind the new Iron Curtain. We really hope that our love letters were received by someone there and that they hear us. I truly hope our people will endure. We will never give up our people. And by the way, there's this idea of giving up territory in some kind of negotiation. Our people are there. We will never betray them. That is not negotiable in the view of your government.

I really don't want to express political opinions. That's not my role. But imagine a situation where you've been attacked by bandits. They're threatening you, killing your children, and someone suggests maybe it would be better to negotiate. That is impossible now. This is just my opinion as a citizen of Ukraine. Olena Zelenska dated her future husband in college.

She became a writer on Zelensky's comedy shows. In a sitcom called Servant of the People, he played a teacher who was elected president of Ukraine. He turned parity into power in 2019 when he actually ran and won 73 percent of the vote. The Zelenskys have an 18-year-old daughter and nine-year-old son. Are you stronger than you thought you were? Everyone has become stronger. I'm not unique. You survive, and going through trials, you automatically become stronger. So, yes, we're getting stronger, but will that help us? I hope so. Madam First Lady, may I show you some photographs from the United States? This is a picture I took on Fifth Avenue in New York. Madam First Lady, may I show you some photographs from the United States? With pleasure. This is a picture I took on Fifth Avenue in New York.

Oh, wonderful. This is San Francisco. This is a home in the state of Florida. It's wonderful. This is a bumper sticker where I buy my groceries. I took this picture on the east side of Manhattan. This is a baseball game in Denver, Colorado. And this is from Florida as well.

What do you say to the American people? I can say I really feel the support. When I was in Washington, I was handed a short letter written by a guy named Hector. He's a teenager, 14 years old. He wrote me a short letter with words of support. By the way, if possible, and Hector sees this program, I would like to tell him. Dear Hector, I remember it.

I took your letter with me to Ukraine, and it was charming, and it was extremely touching. So, it seems to me that normal people understand what evil is, and that the attacker is evil. That it is normal to defend your country, your children, your homes. I'm sure that Americans themselves are like that. What does the future hold? We are dreaming about this. Over these months, we've seen the human being

is the center of everything. This is what makes us different from the aggressor. They don't count their dead. We count every person who died. And we want everyone still alive to feel confident and to have opportunities to grow. That's what we dream about. That's how we want to see our country in the future. Sometimes historic events suck. But what shouldn't suck is learning about history.

I do that through storytelling. History That Doesn't Suck is a chart-topping history-telling podcast chronicling the epic story of America, decade by decade. Right now, I'm digging into the history of incredible infrastructure projects of the 1930s, including the Hoover Dam, the Empire State Building, the Golden Gate Bridge, and more. The promise is in the title, History That Doesn't Suck, available on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. The California gold rush town of Grizzly Flats was founded in 1851.

People came for the gold, but stayed for the trees. Lumber from lush forests supported Sierra Nevada foothill towns for decades. Then, one August night in 2021, the Caldor Fire roared out of the El Dorado National Forest, and in less than 15 minutes, Grizzly Flats was gone. Today, the community's anger is still raw. Many residents blame the U.S. Forest Service for letting a few-acre blaze morph into a monstrous wildfire. In our months-long investigation, we found evidence of mismanagement by the Forest Service, and critics who say its outdated tactics and overgrown lands have led to millions of acres and foothill towns burning needlessly.

We went to Grizzly Flats to see for ourselves what happened that August night when a wall of fire ripped through town. I took a couple pictures of my house, knowing that that would be the last time I ever saw it. You knew that? Yeah, and when you got hot embers raining down on you and your friends and family's houses are exploding and you're listening to it and there ain't nothing between here and them to stop yet, you know your fate. Candace Tyler's world went up in flames on August 17th when the Caldor Fire tore out of the El Dorado National Forest and burned the family ranch to the ground.

So where was your house? So right here would have been our bedroom. And then over here, this would have been walking into our dining room. The Tylers have lived on this hilltop for five generations. Today, their homestead is a charred hellscape. Blackened trees stand like sentinels over a shadow world. For more than a year, the Tylers and their two children have lived in a trailer. More than 600 homes, nearly all of Grizzly Flats, were destroyed in minutes. The Caldor fire would burn for two months, scorching more than 200,000 acres and costing $271 million to extinguish.

When it first started, did you have confidence that the Forest Service would handle it, would put it out? Absolutely. 100%. A 40-acre fire, you can't put that out in the canyon. And don't get me wrong, I lived here my whole life. I know that's a steep, treacherous canyon, but you're still telling me that you don't have the ability and the equipment to put it out? They didn't do nothing. In our opinion, they did nothing to put this fire out.

Caldor started as a small plume of smoke about 4 miles south of Grizzly Flats. It was August 14th, 7 p.m. This was federal land, so the U.S. Forest Service was in charge, responsible for calling in firefighters and resources. We discovered that problems started right away. Maps were out of date. Firefighters had trouble finding the fire. As she was listening to her police scanner, Candace Tyler told us her heart sank. They're sending them down Caldor Road. Well, it's been washed out for three years. How are you going to get a tanker down there? Have you seen the washout? It's huge. It would take a month of

Sundays to fill that hole in or cut a new road. We went to see what Tyler was talking about. Keeping national forests healthy, including maintaining roads, is a big part of the Forest Service's mandate. But we found many roads in the El Dorado forest were impassable, blocked by downed trees and deep ruts. When Caldor broke out, fire engines had to backtrack, a costly two-hour delay. I can't believe it was even happening. It was like watching a slow-motion disaster. Grant Ingram also was listening to his scanner.

A retired fire captain with 35 years' experience, Ingram fought fires for the U.S. Forest Service and for CAL FIRE, California's state agency. Ingram investigated the initial spread of the fire for the local fire district. He believes the U.S. Forest Service management team bears much of the blame. The leadership failed to give the team on the ground what they needed to do to put that fire out in a timely manner. You flat out say it was a failure of leadership. Absolutely. They failed to understand where the fire was going to go. Then they failed to bring in enough equipment and resources

to mitigate that fire. And then they failed to protect the community of Grizzly Flats when they knew it was headed that way. Ingram told us one of the most consequential decisions came in the early hours of August 15th when the fire was still small. At 1 43 a.m just hours into the fire the forest service shut down operations for the night. We'll be pulling everyone off the line for accountability reads the dispatch log a minute byminute account of the fire that we

obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. The Forest Service told us conditions were unsafe and it wanted to reassess. When I worked for other agencies, we typically fought fires at night. That was the best time to do it. But yet this Forest Service incident commander was ordering people to stop. Yes. Turn back, go home. Right. I couldn't believe it at first. Firefighting is dangerous, but you don't call 911 when you're a firefighter, right? You are there as 911. The order to pull out didn't sit well with state and local firefighters

who'd raced in to help the Forest Service. A number of them told us that night was their best chance to contain the fire. They also told us they're trained to fight wildfires 24-7 until the fire is out. None would go on camera for fear of losing their jobs, so we agreed to conceal this firefighter's identity. So when you heard the incident commander say he was pulling out and other equipment, fire engines and bulldozers, left with him, what did you think? What in the world's going on here? I mean, like, what the hell?

We have a fire. You have to suppress the fire. It's just that simple. Did you know that this had the potential to turn into this? Absolutely. Yeah, I think everybody on that hill that night figured that if we didn't get ahead of this thing that night, we were going to be in trouble. The Forest Service knew it too. This is their own fire model for August 15th, also obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. The area almost certain to

burn if nothing was done, is marked in red. In the middle of that bullseye, 600 homes in Grizzly Flats. Yet that same day, the Forest Service dismissed some half-dozen CAL FIRE engines and crews, letting most of them go before their replacements arrived. Ingram told us that breaks every rule of firefighting. The decision to release the Cal Fire firefighters early, even as this fire is growing, that just didn't make any sense to me. It made no sense to me and it should never have happened. Retired fire captain Grant Ingram now owns a fire mapping business. He showed us why he was alarmed.

This is where it started, and it went all the way up here to Grizzly Flat? Yes. On the second day, August 15th, the fire engulfed 200 acres. On August 16th, 700 acres. That night, the winds in the canyon whipped the flames into a frenzy, consuming 11,000 acres. Flames jumped from treetop to treetop, picking up speed. The El Dorado forest was so dense with dead trees and parched underbrush, it was like a pyre just waiting for a match. Now everything's on fire. It's all raining

down on this community. They're sitting in front of a blowtorch and they can't get out of the way. We saw the glow coming up. From half a mile away, retired Deputy Fire Chief Lloyd Ogun could see that blowtorch, smell it, feel it. We stood on the deck right where you and I are standing and you could feel this whole deck was just rumbling from a fire that was a ridge over. Yeah, it was just rumbling, and that noise was literally like a freight train coming. We met Ogun at Leone Meadows, a campsite south of Grizzly Flats. He told us the flames were 30 feet above the treetops that night, hissing and crackling. Ogun said he knew then the Kaldor fire was out of control.

The thing I struggle with is why would any resources get released on a fire that is in an obviously high-risk location in a high-risk environment? I have not heard what I would term as an acceptable answer to that question yet. I haven't heard any answer to that question yet. The Forest Service says its resources were stretched thin. The Dixie Fire, which would become the second largest in California history, was burning savagely nearby. But retired fire captain Grant Ingram told us there were regional crews available,

and he pointed to the dispatch log that showed 12 extra fire engines being called up as the flames were tearing into Grizzly Flats. But it was too late. All of a sudden, all these fire engines start showing up, and it's like, well, where were they two days ago? Why weren't they in the neighborhood of Grizzly Flats prior to this fire even getting there? Why weren't they? I don't know. The Forest Service won't answer our questions. In all the wreckage of Caldor, Leone Meadows stands out, an island of green in a desolate wasteland. The fire skirted the camp thanks to a massive fuel break or buffer zone the camp had

cut. Retired Deputy Fire Chief Lloyd Ogun pointed out where they had thinned the trees and cleared the combustible underbrush. When Kaldor hit, there was little left to feed it. The fire slowed and changed direction. Then Ogun showed us the U.S. Forest Service land next to the camp that had not been cleared. There, everything burned. There was no management on the Forest Service side, and that's the result. It's kind of mind-blowing to see all that devastation there,

and it gets to the property line of the camp where the land was managed, and this all survived. It's all green. Yep. Could this have been replicated around Grizzly Flats? Yes, absolutely. That's what the Trestle Project was all about, was to do exactly this. And had that been done, there's a high probability Grizzly Flats wouldn't have burned. Would not have burned. Yep. The trestle project was launched by the Forest Service nine years ago when its own research warned Grizzly Flats could be incinerated if wildfire ignited the overgrown El Dorado forest.

The agency promised to clean up thousands of acres, starting with 970 acres on the town's southeast flank, where the fire would likely hit first. Almost a decade later, only a fraction of the work was done, and the Caldor fire wiped out Grizzly Flats exactly as the Forest Service had predicted. Why didn't they do this? It was part of their project. I think that's the million-dollar question, I think, is why wasn't it done? Residents aren't the only ones who have tried to get answers from the Forest Service. We asked repeatedly for documents, a comment, to have the taxpayer-funded service tell us what happened here.

Last week, the Forest Service emailed us that it plans to dramatically increase the scale of forest health projects, like the Trestle Project, and has launched a 10-year plan starting with communities at immediate risk. But that's no solace for the residents of Grizzly Flats, who told us any trust they had in the Forest Service has been shattered. Last year, Caldor was one of three devastating fires in the region that started on federal land and burned more than a million acres. Candace Tyler fears unless the Forest Service follows through on their promises, more towns like Grizzly Flats will go up in flames. The Forest Service has said they did all they could. They threw all the resources they had at the fire. You laugh.

I laugh? Are you kidding me? Your maps say we're going to burn. Your models show we're going to burn. But you're not worried about it? Oh, you don't have the resources? That's a joke. You'd be hard-pressed to find a sport where the captain matters more than it does in rugby.

In these fierce pitched matches, leadership is as critical as raw talent. What, after all, is a scrum, but a literal exercise in team bonding. Captaincy is more important still when your rugby team represents an entire country. So when Sia Khaleesi was named captain of the South African national team, the first black player to hold that honor, it may as well have marked a political appointment. And Khaleesi has responded with a singular approach, reconsidering a macho sport and recognizing how valuable rugby can be, helping bind a country still riven by crime, corruption, and inequality. You might think of rugby players as human bumper cars, running forward, passing backward, and obliterating everything in the way. This sport combines the collisions of football, minus pads, with the fluid continuity of basketball or hockey. It is, as the saying goes, the game for hooligans played by gentlemen.

I always call it control violence. That's what happens here. Control violence, that's rugby. And it's legal violence. Yeah, it's legal. So we smash each other on the field, then it's done after that. Sia Khalisi is the first black player to be named captain of South Africa's national team, the Springboks, an international rugby powerhouse and national institution associated for more than a century with white Afrikaner rule and power. Today, in post-apartheid South Africa,

Khaleesi is keenly aware of the challenges of transforming the team. Well, we are human beings before we are sportsmen, you know, and the more we talk to one another, the more we understand each other, the more we get to know each other, and the more we trust each other and open up to each other, the more you get that deeper sense of connection with your teammate. You're saying if I know your motivations, if I know your story, when we're covered in mud and we're at the end of a game...

Yeah, you think of that, because I don't want to let you down. You know, when you're standing there and I'm tired, I don't give up because I know that you won't drop me, and you know what I'm fighting for too. We wanted to see this all for ourselves, but with Khaleesi preoccupied with playing, we leaned on his friend and recently retired Springbok teammate. Tandai Mwatarira, a.k.a. The Beast, accompanied us to an international match in Cape Town this past summer.

He was our rugby guide as South Africa played Wales. If I haven't forgotten, you're going to tell you that. Lesson one. Come on, man. Making your way to your seat with a rugby legend yields its own version of a scrum. Lesson two. Rugby demands a combination of speed, power, durability, and poise. And, of course, bone-rattling hits. Look at Hardy coming up to a spin.

Now he's going to be sore tomorrow. Can you feel that in the morning? Exactly. Another scrum? Man, I can only imagine what goes on in the bottom of the pile there. It's a dark place. Captain Khaleesi featured prominently. And now Khaleesi in this one's face. Rozier, Rozier!

Making runs, driving forward. That was a good position. That was a lot of positions. In the second half of that game, Khaleesi scored a try. And it is here, Khaleesi! Rugby's equivalent of a touchdown. A black captain scoring in a stadium filled with South Africans of all colors. How things have changed. You grew up during apartheid. What role did rugby play in Afrikaner

society? Massive. It was our holy grail. It was our opium. When former Springbok captain Francois Pienaar played, black South Africans often cheered the opposing team. But when Nelson Mandela became president in 1994, in an effort to unite the country, he threw his support and moral force behind the spring box when they hosted the 1995 Rugby World Cup. In a country where whites make up just 13 percent of the population, there was only one black player on the team. Back it comes to Stransky. Up goes the kick. Up goes the kick. The Springboks won the final match, beating their rivals New Zealand. There it is.

The triumph was turned into the movie Invictus. Mandela played by Morgan Freeman, Pienaar by Matt Damon. This idea of using sport to repair a society. I don't think it's an idea. I don't think it's a tool. It just does that. It just is. It's not something, let's let you sport and we're going to unite people.

It doesn't happen that way. Then it's false. It's contrived. It's made up. Sport's not made up. Unscripted. Unscripted. Unscripted. Unchoreographed.

Guts, guts, guts. You know, and then it just comes together and everybody's there. Everybody's a shareholder. Winner nations, team runs out. Everybody's a shareholder in that team. Everybody. Sia Khaleesi was just four when South Africa won that 1995 World Cup. He grew up in the windswept streets of Zwide, a racially segregated area, a so-called

township, outside the Indian Ocean city of Port Elizabeth. And this was my street I used to walk to school. Born to young unmarried parents, he says he was lovingly raised by his grandmother. Money and food were scarce. Sometimes all he had before bed was a glass of water mixed with sugar. He and his grandmother lived in this home with cousins, uncles and aunts. Sia says he slept on the floor where rats ran over him. The only water source for the whole house. This is where you got your water, right here?

Yeah, right here. And then this is the toilet. And it's working now. Probably didn't work when I lived here. Some of his earliest memories? His mother bruised and missing teeth at the hands of men. Both she and Sia's grandmother

died before he graduated from high school. But he says it wasn't an unhappy childhood. He made do with whatever he could. I didn't have toys. I couldn't afford toys. But I had to have fun. I had to enjoy myself. What did I do? I found a brick. That was my car. I loved that brick with everything that I had. The brick was your car?

Yeah. I used to wash it. I would park it, wake up in the morning. This is all that I had. The brick was your car. Yeah. I used to wash it, I would park it, wake up in the morning. This is all that I had. Around the same time, he came to this field, littered with stones and thorns, and picked up his first rugby ball. It was a refuge from the violence, drugs, and chaos beyond the stadium walls. This place itself, if it wasn't around,

if there wasn't a team, if there wasn't sport, and the community of sport, I don't know where I would have ended up. I was really happy. I enjoyed myself. It inspired me and it taught me who I am. Then came a major plot point. At age 12, playing on those pocked fields, he was spotted by a coach and offered a scholarship to the elite, mostly white, gray junior school just 15 miles away. And just the building, you know, looking at it, I mean, everything I need is here compared to what I'm used to. He says that for the very first time, he was given socks, a toothbrush, three meals a day, and his own bed. That must have been such a culture shock to you. Yeah, it was. But the toughest thing was when I

had to go home on weekends. I'll go back and sleep on the floor. And I told myself right then and there, I'm not letting this go. I will not fail. He added a carapace of muscle, trained hard, and by the time he graduated from school was drafted to play professional rugby. Rachel Smith, a fan of the sport, met Sia when she was 21. Sia was young and he was trying to figure out a lot, I think, in his life. I've met a lot of rugby players before and I know... What are they like? Everything that you read, I assume, it's true. Still, they started dating, and soon the country's racial divisions were laid bare.

He was accused of selling out. She of, quote, contaminating her white bloodline. They married and have two children. They also adopted two of Sia's younger half-siblings. But Khaleesi admits he wasn't immune to the trappings of celebrity. My head got big at times. I spent the money buying sports cars, drinking every weekend, spending the money with friends, you know, and just getting involved in things that I would never be proud of. But I want to be better and I want to learn. I go to therapy and I get to talk to someone, you know. Can I stop you? You just very casually mentioned therapy. That is not something a lot of 31-year-old men, much less professional athletes, would just drop into conversation. Because it helps me heal. It helps me be better. You're sick, maybe mentally or emotionally,

therapy is your medication. I want to be the generation of black men that are there for their children, you know, that are telling the women that they love them, not only by words, but by action, too. In 2018, with the Springboks mired in one of its worst- ever stretches, new coaches were appointed and Khaleesi named captain.

Before I mean he told me he'd be named as captain and I was just like, what? What? What? And eventually I couldn't speak so I ended up hanging up on him. And you were a rugby fan, you grasped the significance of this. I mean it was unbelievable, you know, just to see so many South Africans feel like they were finally being represented in this team. Their team beginning to resemble the diversity of the country, the Springboks unexpectedly made the 2019 World Cup final held in Yokohama, Japan.

The night before, the captain and wife discussed not the next day's big match, but what would accompany victory. We all want these big moments. It can be day's big match, but what would accompany victory. We all want these big moments. It can be just a big moment. That's it. Or you can use it for so much more. How can we use this opportunity, not just to help us, but to help others around us, you know, in our country. Biggest game of your career, night before the game, and you're thinking about what you're going to do to enrich South Africa. This is why I'm here. That's my purpose. South Africa! The World Cup winners in 2019! The Springboks won that World Cup resoundingly. You said that victory in Yokohama in 2019 meant more to South Africa than yours. Why? We had a black World Cup winning captain.

In South Africa, in the townships, across the land, everybody, again, was proud. They were world champions, and that is what sport does. Nothing else can do that. Fulfilling their promise to use the moment, Rachel and Sia started the Khaleesi Foundation. We accompanied them on a visit to a shantytown outside Cape Town. This feeding program provides healthy meals for thousands of kids a day.

I can't give them food that I wouldn't give my mother. Khaleesi says the abuse his mother faced has always haunted him. The scourge of gender-based violence is one of the pillars of the foundation's work. They hand out what they call Power to You Packs, a whistle, pepper spray, and emergency contacts. We actually give it to young boys to give to women in their communities to tell them what it's about. It's intentional. You're not just going to give these out to the girls and the women.

You're going to give these to the boys as well. Yeah, absolutely. For all Khaleesi's social ambitions, his sights are fixed firmly on defending the Rugby World Cup next year. Today, affection for him and the team remains at fever pitch. Remember that game we attended against Wales this past summer? Sia Khaleesi's try, his touchdown, held up as the decisive score as South Africa won the series. The players were exuberant, if not a little bruised, and took a much-deserved victory lap. As for the fans, in suburbs, in townships, and in the stadium, they celebrated wildly. For those few hours on the pitch, the country's troubles and divisions faded. As is often the case with rugby in South Africa, it was much more than a game. Hurricane Ian exploded into southwest Florida Wednesday,

carving a trail of death and devastation across the state before slamming the Carolinas this weekend. Ian's 150-mile-an-hour winds and 12-foot storm surge flattened parts of Fort Myers and the surrounding area. It'll be days before authorities know the cost in lives and property. Florida insurance claims could be close to $50 billion. Fueled by water temperatures two degrees above average in the Gulf of Mexico, Ian became what the National Hurricane Center calls a rapidly intensifying storm. Hurricanes are not more frequent today, but frequently more severe, and the hurricane season is far from over. I'm Leslie Stahl. We'll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes.