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40 in washington and this is cnn cnn >> breaking news good morning, everyone. i'm casey khan, live in washington, dc and we do begin this hour with major breaking news overnight. a bridge in baltimore collapsing after it was hit by a large ship. you can see that happening there video from that live stream shows the moment of impact with the francis scott key bridge, which then crumbles into the water. this happened around 01:30 a.m. eastern time overnight. official say that multiple cars fell into the tab sco river below right now rescue cuz crews are searching for at least seven people. one official called the collapse, a quote, developing mass casualty event. cnn's gabe cohen has been dispatched to baltimore.

he joins us on the phone and route to the scene good morning to you. what do we know at this hour >> yeah. so casey is you mentioned at this hour we have confirmed that this shipping container, a couple of hours ago around 01:30 a.m. eastern time collided with it appears that a column of the key bridge that's along interstate 695 here in baltimore is a critical bridge. if you live in washington, baltimore, new york, philadelphia, as you drive through the region, it gets a lot of traffic and as we understand it, there may may have been according to the fire department, a little bit of low visibility when the shipping container collided with the column. we don't know exactly what went wrong, but according to emergency crews they're looking for potentially 20 people in this taps go river at this hour we don't know the

latest on any potential injuries, but it's a fairly frantic scene. i can tell you where in the area around baltimore, not far from the bridge, but first responders have that entire area around interstate 695, around the keeper age of lockdown where seeing cruise of flying by us. there are a lot of different departments that seem to have responded to this we know that different federal agencies are involved in the search. they're trying to rescue people who were in the water. we just don't have much of an update at this hour. casey, on how they're doing. but we know the potassium river this time of year might be 45 degrees or so according to some of the data so we're seeing online and so it would be a really urgent search to reach people who might have 123 hours and in water temperature, that cold as cruz tried to rescue them >> so gave we were speaking

earlier on our air with the spokesman for the baltimore city that fire department. and he talked about divers being in that water. you mentioned how cold it was. he also said that there was a vehicle that was this. they're not sure exactly what it was, but it was the size of a tractor trailer he said, and i also want to point now to everyone that's joining us. it's obviously still very dark outside this happen overnight, but these are live aerials from wj la that we are now able to see of the bridge. again we can see this collapse because there was a live stream of it at, at the time gabe, i also want to just bring to everyone and to you this this news just in and cleared by our teams who are working on this story. we are now reporting that the cargo ship that struck the francis scott key bridge in baltimore was a singaporean

flagged can container ship. called the dalai, according to data from a maritime tracking website, that website does show the ship stopped in baltimore, surrounded by a first response. boats. there was a petty officer, first-class for the coast guard in baltimore, matthew west, who also told the new york times that this was the ship that stuck to that struck the bridge. and we have reached out to the coast guard. the ship had a length of about 300 meters. that's 984 feet. it was 100 feet wide. and when you do watch that video, you can see this ship again, 140, 50 57 feet wide, striking that sort of support column. you see it there on the left-hand side of your screen, it strikes that column directly and you just watch that bridge collapse in into the river gave were obviously, as you've been

careful to note, we've had reports of at least seven people people in the water. it has been described as a mass casualty event here in terms of the responders, what does it been like for you trying to get access to? i know you said that that first responders have this cutoff pretty well. what are you hearing in terms of their plans to communicate with you to let us have access to this scene if anything at this hour >> okc, it's a totally clear right now. as i mentioned, they really have the area locked down. as we're still seeing those crews coming in and out. and look, this is a really industrial area, shipping containers are constantly coming in and out there for a lot of these ports. and shipyards along the water, along the tapscott river, as you head into baltimore. so it's not an area where there are a lot of homes along the water right here. this is a lot of industrial space. and so we're not really sure at what

point we're going to get much access to this because as you can tell from the aerials and the video, that's emerged of the collapse. this is really a disaster zone right now. this is a serious seen where they are still working on the acute crisis, which is rescuing people out of the water as you said, we've heard seven, we've also heard up to 20 from fire crews and so they thank are very focused on that right now, and they are trying to keep everybody out because it's still quite an urgency >> know of course. so gave just to bring everyone up to speed, who may be just joining us here. this again is the francis scott key bridge outside. it's in baltimore, maryland maryland. it's it's the outermost crossing of the baltimore harbor. so ships that are coming in from the chesapeake bay, this would be

the first bridge that they would go underneath on their way in to baltimore harbor. there you can see it on your screen. that's the map that's also the road. it's called 695 here during this area, it's known as the baltimore beltway and it runs in a circle around the city of baltimore. it's really an essential traffic link according to the transit authority in maryland, carries about 11 million people over the course of the year was opened in march arch of 1977. it's named for the author of the star spangled banner and you of course may remember that that was written in in baltimore and so this is the history of this this bridge the events that took place here of, course, is this critical at transit link? now, if you look on the right of your screen, this is a live picture that

we're getting in from an affiliate. you can see the ship is still there. and these sort of emergency responders have noted that there are some containers that are still it's difficult to we'll see in this picture because the sun obviously is not up yet but there are some of these containers hanging in a way that is making this a very difficult scene. for first responders who of course, have to be very, very careful in how they are approaching this now again, we're just learning early details about the ship itself as i said, a little bit earlier, it's a singaporean flagship. the dalai. >> i think it's important >> for people to understand that. it's very common to see shifts of this size container ships coming and going when if you're driving on these roads in the baltimore area, this is not an unusual situation or

site by any means, it's something that is routinely navigated safely by ships of this size and magnitude i do think one thing people have been pointing out gave is that it did seem to hit the support structure dead on in a way that caused the immediate and basically total collapse of the span >> right. and i think it raises a lot of questions like we've heard fire crews say it, been there may as though there may have been low visibility at the time when in this happened. but but based on the video that is really a stunning video of the moment that bridge collapses. you can see it's pretty clearly and you can see the harbor pretty clearly now, what that visit visibility looked like from inside the ship. we don't know. and i think there are definitely a lot of questions because this is an area where coming in and out of the harbor in baltimore

extremely common for large ships to be coming in and out these container ships are used to this area. so we don't know what went wrong here and what could have caused one of them to derive here's directly into one of the columns and create this mass casualty event. again. the video shows sort of a snippet of what happened here. and we may get additional video, additional information and that sort of changes things. but naturally, there are a lot of questions case as you're laying out here, where in an area where this is so common to see such a devastating disaster on a bridge that's carrying commuters and travelers 24 hours a day, seven days a week. so i think that's something we're hoping to learn from fire crews and police here in the coming hours. but as i

mentioned before, as you've mentioned, they're describing this as a mass casualty events and there's a real urgency to it at the moment. so i think those are questions they're going to wait an answer when it's right >> for sure, gaiman. and again, let's just pause here for a second and bring everyone up to speed because we did speak with kevin cartwright of the baltimore city fire department on our air here about a half an hour ago, 40 minutes ago? or so. >> and he did update as to as you point out, >> call the same mass casualty multi-agency incident, he said that there may be up to 20 individuals in the potassium sco river, which is the name of this body of water at this point where the bridge crosses, as well as he says, moles so full d2 multiple vehicles in the water as well. and again, as we noted at the ship, and you can see it live on the

darker picture you're seeing on the right side of your screen is live video on the left side of your screen. what you're seeing is the moment that this bridge collapsed at about 01:30 am eastern time overnight. and you can see that it hit on the way down the top of these kind of piles of containers that the ship was carrying. and that those containers are now presenting hazards to these teams that are trying to rescue people in the river. mr. carter? right again, the baltimore fire department representative did also tell us that there are divers in the water right now trying to conduct these rescues. we've also seen on social media that there are volunteer fire departments, for example, from harford county, which is a neighboring neighboring bring county to baltimore county, heading to the scene, really underscores your your point gave that this is a real all hands on deck type of situation

as i mean, this is really kind of a once in a lifetime event for a city like baltimore, that something like this, what unfold again, to give people some contexts, this is used by 11 million people over the year. this per year, this bridge, it's a major route for commuters in this major metropolitan area that baltimore, washington consists of. the bridges actually located, so it's named for francis scott key, author of the star-spangled banner. it's, it crosses within 100 yards of the site where key watched the bombardment of fort mchenry in september of 18, 14. and of course it's that battle that inspired him to write the words of the star-spangled banner that's again within view. you can sort of see for mchenry off in the distance when you drive across this bridge, which i have personally done many times in my life gave let's just start again from the top as

more and more people join in with us and learn about this as they find themselves waking up. let's just walk through what we know about what happened early this morning and where things stand now >> yes. okay. see, according to authorities, this all happen around 01:30 a.m. eastern eastern time. here in baltimore, a large shipping container at that hour it appears based on the videos that we've seen, collided and hearing from authorities that shipping container collided with the one of the columns of the key bridge in baltimore. it is, as you mentioned, a major meter bridge major route. as you cut through baltimore, going between let's say washington and new york all the way up the northeast and it appears that in the bridge collapsed you can see it in the

video, crumble into several pieces. and authorities think they are are potentially up to 20 people in the water. they don't. now, as you mentioned, there was some sort of large tractor trailers size vehicle on the bridge at the time but that is what emergency crews are now looking for. anyone who is in vehicles or in the water that may have ended up down in the punjab sco river first responders have been there at the scene. they were calling it a mass casualty event and there was an urgent search right now. urgent rescue for any people who could be there in the water and right now, the entire area around the bridges shut down. there are crew's not only from baltimore, but from surrounding agencies, from federal agencies that are assisting with this because this is a very, very serious incident and serious rescue operation that's now underway as mentioned before we arrived in baltimore a little while ago, we're probably about a quarter mile from the

bridge at this point, but the area is shutdown. police have shut down the road. there are only wedding those first responder vehicles understandably come in and out of because the water they are in the perhaps go river is roughly 48 degrees he's based on some of the data that we've found online it's cold water. people who end up submerge in that water would likely have 123 hours where they could survive in temperatures like that. and so crews are desperately trying to get people out as quickly as possible. just doing the rough math that has been roughly three-and-a-half hours since this all started, casey and so really for the cruise, if they believe at this hour, which we think they do that, there could still be people in the water. the clock is really ticking and so they have divers in the water. they are trying to locate people. we know so that the mayor, brandon scott tweeted out a couple of hours

ago that this was a significant event that he was on route to it that the governor of maryland was aware as well and that they were working with these various other agencies to work on this rescue operation. obviously, the sun is sun to come up here in baltimore. it's going to be another day for commuters where this is going to create serious problems across this area here in baltimore and have implications all the way likely from dc up to the philadelphia area and maybe even beyond that but that's really forward thinking at this point, right now, the focus on this is on this desperate rescue operation to locate people who might be in the water after the shipping container collided with the key bridge and send centered crashing down? >> yeah. no. absolutely critical to focus on that. at this point. and i gave we also have this trust in the secretary of transportation, pete buddha, judge, says that he's talked with the governor of maryland west more and with

a merit baltimore mayor scott, to offer federal support from the department of transportation. after this incident, he says rescue efforts remain underway fibers he notes in the baltimore area should follow local responder guidance on detours and the response. and as we said, kevin cartwright, who is with the baltimore fire department, says that they are searching for up to 20 people who may be in the river right now along with multiple vehicles. i'm just going to ask, our control room to put up. we have some still images of the scene of the aftermath of the scene that are a little bit brighter that we can perhaps there we go. so you can see that's the container ship itself. that was the container ship up on the left. this is the damage to the bridge but those containers, of course are part of the vessel and we're also receiving reports that some of them may be unstable and that this is of

course, making this rescue scene all the more difficult. four first responders who are trying desperately to rescue these people at this hour again, if you're just joining us at this happened about 01:30 a.m. eastern time overnight and let's if we can bring up the video of the moment and we've got both live pictures and the video of itself of the collapse itself at about 01:30 morning. this was being live streamed at the time and you can see that ship just hit that support structure for the bridge as the rest of it collapses and on the right side of your screen you're seeing an increasing number of lights. it looks like as first responders have descended on to the scene, we are, of course, still waiting for the sun to come up here at about 05:20 a.m. eastern time

people in this area, we happen to be brought testing from washington, dc in this road is part of the network of roads that people use every day to commute. throughout this major metropolitan area. we should note this road up part of what's known as the baltimore beltway. it's circles the city of baltimore. it's also the main route for trucks carrying hazardous materials because the other for major highways that run through the baltimore area are actually tunnels underneath the city. it's not considered to be safe to take those materials through the city that way. so they typically use this bridge, which again, four lane bridge carries quite a bit of traffic it does look like as well that we are learning that the baltimore police and the transit authority or are creating a media staging area, which i'm sure gave, you'll be on your way to shortly so we're

also gave going to listen into there's one of our affiliates is on the scene and we just got a little bit of information from some officials there. this isn't live, but it is just in to us on cnn. let's listen called sum to be. versus community going several from bridge. and then another we were worried again with would appear depending an earthquake. and a low ulama rolling salah funder so we woke up and littered are living. we can look right it out. bedroom. what opencv key bridge like couldn't see anything, but a little bit organelles and a little bit later got up again to check and awesome emergency lakes in the area society to try ball. >> because one of the old >> dog is chasing the fireball came up barrier and was the same progress was maltese jurisdiction. we respond to a disaster. >> so that looks like an

eyewitness account from a former fire official in baltimore talking a little bit about what he saw in the aftermath of this just stunning bridge collapse. again, that happened about 01:30 this morning overnight our law enforcement analysts, andy mccabe is with us now to help us understand a little bit more about what we're seeing and andy, i'm very grateful to have you here with us this morning. i think that obviously anyone who watches this video would of course, have so many questions about how something like this could happen. the fact that the collision was so dead-on with that support structure to cause this to happen. the way that it did. obviously, we don't want to get into irresponsible speculating at all. >> but what >> can you give people who look at this and wonder, how could this have happened? could have happened by accident. did somebody do it deliberately? what do you see when you watch

this? hello, >> casey, it's it's incredibly hard to imagine i know you think about how many times, how many thousands, hundreds of thousands of times ships to that size have gone underneath this bridge without incident. this is like the you know, it's a unbelievably rare and unexpected obviously event to start to think about the possibility of intentionality here, which again, we have absolutely no information that would point in that direction right now with the obvious starting place is with the boat itself and the pilots and people on the boat who will be able to give us some insight as to what was going on there in the lead up to this impact and of course, those people will be i'm sure, interviewed at length and their backgrounds

will be looked into but it's just yeah, it's it's just watching a video here. there's the space around the structure that was hit by the ship is me. know five times, six times, ten times larger than the structure itself. the support structure itself. so it's it's certainly makes make anybody ask those sorts questions. but i think it's really important that we hear from authorities on scene after they've had a chance to connect with the operators of that vessel to see if there's really any reason to believe that this could have been some sort of an intentional event or sabotage or something like that, but that's the likely and obvious place to start >> yeah. andy, can you sort of just walk us through what such

an investigation or series of questions might look like. i mean, what our investigator is going to be asking about, what are they going to be looking for as they tried to figure out how this happened? >> you know, it's it's you're probably it's hard to put any sort of kind of odds on this, but they're more likely to find out that there were problems on the vessel problems with navigation equipment, problems with that led to the control of the vessel. there for me have been mechanical issues there may have been systems that weren't working any number of which could have impact on the pilots of the boat. essentially, not knowing that they were going to close or at this case, right at that support structure. so there's a there are many mechanical now function excuses that might play into this before we get to the point of somebody who did something intentional so of

course you're going to want to ask all those things and then you're going to want to know all the background information from the people who are responsible for piloting in that vessel at the time, how long they've been on the job, whether or not they've had any issues problems. in other employment roles, whether they've been on other boats that have bumped into things that they shouldn't have their in an innumerable number of competence and mechanical issues that are probably more likely to play into the answer to this question, then something intentional but those are the roads that investigators are going to have to go down >> it will be >> essential to have this and the transparency of the corporate entities that own this vessel to ensure that they get the transparency and cooperation that if folks they

possibly can that can be very dicey in and of itself because these people are and the corporations behind them, or are likely now going to be subjected to intense and debilitating, at least case civil lawsuits over the massive losses that are going to be connected to this that folks don't like to talk when litigation is hanging in the balance. so these are all things that the investigators are going to have to get over problems, hurdles are going to have to navigate in trying to get any information out of this company and its employees and those folks who are on the scene yeah. really just remarkable remarkable set of circumstances. andy, just standby with me. i want to work. we're approaching the bottom of the hour here. i want to play a little bit of we spoke here at cnn to the baltimore city fire department spokesman around 04:30 a.m. eastern time so this was the latest update of about an hour

ago. let's just listen to what he told us and then stick with me. we'll talk about on the other side we are here at our fort arm instead, park in the midst. and managing >> a mass casualty multi-agency incident here. as you know, approximately 130 this morning, a vessels traveling through the tap soko river outbound collide what's a column causing the collapse of the key bridge unfortunately, we understand that there was video is up to 20 individuals who may be the metabolical river right now as well as multiple vehicles so we have as indicated on mass casualty, multi-agency incident underway so that was again, kevin cartwright of the baltimore city fire department,

telling us >> that at this hour or last hour, i should say there were up to 20 people known to be in the water as well as vehicles that there are divers in the water at trying to rescue these individuals were joined on the phone or excuse me, via skype. andy mccabe is still with us. andy you mentioned again, we're being careful to speculate about whether this was an intentional or accidental impact. and you did talk about sort of the follow-on effects, but when they're trying to figure out actually how this occurred, what sort of data tends to be available in these investigations? i mean, are they looking at computers on the ship >> what >> do you know or what can you tell us in terms of what sort of information threads are? eligible for them to pull on beyond. just obviously, of course interviewing the individuals who were in charge

of piloting the ship >> sure. so a lot of that depends, casey, on how on the details of that ship, how old it is, what sort of technology it's equipped with really set the table in terms of what sort of information or data you have to work with. but you can imagine the entire scope of gps data and systems data that really will show you exactly how where, when the ship was last kind of put on the course that brought it to impacting that column. the number of people who were involved in piloting the ship at the time this sort of inputs that those folks who are delivering into the systems is steer the ship there's that that can vary greatly if this is like a really old vessel that's in a state of disrepair and hasn't been updated. that data could

be pretty rudimentary. >> but >> any sort of inputs that go into that system on a set course that had been planned out some time before. >> it looks >> less likely that someone at the last second took it off course and into that column those are those are some of the systems that there'll be looking forward to see if they even exist on the boat before they find out what's data they have in this situation >> but >> again, those people who are at the controls of those systems are going to be your best resource and what they really need right now, some cooperation and some kind of really solid interview feedback from those folks. >> eddy, what's the role of the united states coast guard in this kind of a situation. we've noted that they are involved in responding to the scene yeah, so the coast guard

is obviously in kind of in charge of the management >> of these waterways coast guard, of course, are part of dhs. dhs more broadly has the responsibility for oversight and law enforcement investigative activity over over these entities that that use the waterways. and of course, how that how that stuff is done. so yeah, it's there are a lot of folks with expertise to add to this situation. you have underwater search and recovery teams it's from law enforcement entities. i would expect across the region will be assisting in the identification of vehicles and victims and the recovery of folks who may still be in a position to be recovered i know the fbi has an accomplished underwater search and rescue

team that typically is used for identifying and recovering evidence from crimes >> but >> most of those teams have mutual aid agreements. these are such specialized skills. people who had of the competence and the capability to deploy very specialized equipment like underwater sonars and radar equipment that they use to find particular shapes and items and things like that very dark and cold water, which i'm sure they're dealing with here. so even just organizing the response wants to a mass casualty event like this is really a science in and of itself. and it takes folks with vast experience and filming familiarity with the resources that are available in the region and that connections the history of collaboration on other events, other responses the connection some bring the right folks to the table at the

time. i'm sure they are doing going through all those exercises right now there is an incident command system which provides the sum fracture of the response to any event like this. formal designation of an entity and an individual who's in charge and then that's broken down into all sorts of other systems about that, manage the human resources that respond to these events. so i would expect our officials involved what we're going through that process right now and getting as many hands involved in this problem as they possibly can >> fast name. so we're very grateful to have you on this andy, just because i mean, your knowledge of simply the capabilities that these agencies have at their disposal as we tried to investigate this really fascinating, please please standby because we're going to continue this conversation through the hour. i do want to bring in our

meteorologist, derek van dam because derek obviously the weather conditions are very important component of something like this. both questions about whether visibility may have been impaired for the ship as it was trying to navigate the harbor and also, of course, the temperature of the water there. we know that there are divers in the water trying to rescue we last new as of about an hour ago that there were 20 people that they were trying to rescue in the water. and of course, multiple vehicles as well. what can you tell us about? >> the >> conditions there for the people who are victims of what happened here, as well as first responders >> yeah, this is casey, a critical moment in time for this search and rescue operation not only because of the water temperatures, but the surrounding air temperature as well. so impact actually not only the search and rescue operation, but the potential of people still underwater or

within the water conditions there. so the closest water gauge that we could find that the pitocin you river is roughly 48 degrees. that's a water temperature of 48 degrees, air temperature, roughly 43 degrees. so air colder than water. now, a temperature of roughly 50 doesn't sound all that cold. but indeed that type of water temperature can be deadly. remember, cold water drains body heat about four times faster than cold air actually can. and when we get down to the important timing and what really matters right now is this cold water survivability? how long can the human body sustain these types of water temperatures, assuming that there are people in the water from this collapsed bridge and i showed you that we have water temperatures. they're roughly about 48 degrees, so you look at this and our gauge here showing about 123 hour window, give or take an hour or so of how long that body can sustain

water temperatures of that temperature. so that is why it is so incredibly crucial. what's happening underwater with those divers getting in there as soon as they did were about four hours on since the bridge collapsed? at roughly 130 in the morning. remember, cold shock and hypothermia are a concern when the body enters cold water and water temperatures of roughly 48 to 50 degrees without any kind of protection. your heart rate increases, your changing in breathing increases, and even your blood pressure changes as well. so that's the type of physiological impacts to your body as we impact our field, the impacts of cold water and cold water shock. now, in terms of visibility for this boat we checked just moments prior to 130 and there was ten mile visibility recorded. that is the clearest possible conditions that any kind of weather observation network could potentially our reports. so we don't see any concerns

with visibility even though there have been some discussions about the potential of visibility problems on the ground, and we've talked about the air temperature at 43 degrees. the good news is for this search and rescue operation, is there radar is dry around baltimore and the bridge. and you can see the rain as well off to the west. we don't see that to be a concern until tomorrow. but when we talk about the surge of water that is impacting this area, we do have a coastal flood warning for this surrounding region including the potassium river area, baltimore, the nation's capital, and through the delmarva peninsula mine coastal flooding and dangerous rip currents that need to be taken into factor. throughout this search and rescue operation, casey, so much whether and impacts here to unpack, but really water temperatures 48 degrees and we have this narrow window of time when it is so crucially important to get to those potential survivors there from this bridge collapse, casey >> yeah. no, derrick, that that was all great. and forgive me.

if if you've said this, but can i ask you about the wind and what impact that might have? it seems like we may be lucky not windier than it is >> yeah. right. exactly. so a lot of things we're not noticing wins greater than ten miles per hour. so if there's any search and rescue boats that are perhaps navigating the water is trying to stay still over a particular area well, we don't anticipate the winds to be a concern now, but with the approaching storm system that is coming in from the west as what happens with approaching cold fronts, we get an increase in the wind's not quite sure on the wind direction out of that, but it would assume more of a suddenly flow and advance of a cold front and so through the next afternoon and into the evening hours tonight, wins, will pick up. so that will complicate efforts. and then on top of that and added layer for the search and rescue operation will be the precipitation that will fall overnight and into the day tomorrow. here's a three-day forecast and in fact, you can see the chances of rain

just as i mentioned, not today, but tomorrow and high temperatures here in the '50s for that search and rescue operation with more rain on thursday as well? >> alright, derrick, thank you very much for that standby. i'm sure will want to come back to you as people are just waking up and joining us and trying to figure out what we know at this hour and on that note, it's it's 540 here on the east coast. if you are just waking up i and joining us, we are covering breaking news. this morning, the francis scott key bridge in baltimore, maryland has collapsed after being hit by a container ship. the video that you're seeing on your screen on the left-hand side is video of the moment of impact and collapse captured on a live stream of the bridge that is a container ship called the dalai. it is out of singapore carrying containers through the baltimore harbor. on your right is a live picture

of the scene at this hour from one of our affiliates we are of course, still in darkness here on the east coast, but you are seeing some lights from the search and rescue mission that was underway as of about an hour ago, we were told by the baltimore at fire department that as many as 20 people were in the water and that they are actively trying to rescue the people who are in the water at this hour there were also, of course, multiple vehicles, including one that was described as being the size of a tractor trailer. unclear. if that was actually a tractor trailer or not, but it was the size of a tractor trailer are going into the water of course questions at this hour about how an incident like this could happen considering the volume of cargo and the number of ships that routinely navigate this waterway without any of us

ever noticing that they are even there. and for those of you who are are joining us from outside this, this metropolitan area, we refer to this area as the dmv, dc, maryland, virginia. this is a critical commuter root on the baltimore beltway. it's eye 695. it's circles baltimore. so anyone driving through this area also, if you're going up and down on the east coast, say driving anywhere between washington, philadelphia in new york city. you may find yourself on this road. it's one of three interstates that cut through baltimore. it's the critical one that is a bridge. this is where hazmat trucks drive because the other two are tunnels 895.95 that run underneath if the harbor and the city of baltimore, respectively. so this is a critical root for truck traffic in an incredibly heavily traffic part of what what's sort of broadly referred to as the i95 corridor here along the

east coast of the united states, the bridge carries 11 million people every year or cars, i should say 11 million cars traffic this bridge every year. it's called the francis scott key bridge. in no small part because it crosses within 100 yards of the place where francis scott key wrote the star spangled banner. of course, the national anthem we have a tweet this morning from the secretary of transportation, pete buddha, judge, who says they are offering federal resources to the response from baltimore and maryland officials. he says he's spoken with the governor. that's west more the mayor of baltimore, mayor scott, in the wake of this vessel strike. he notes that vessels remain under rescue efforts, excuse me, remain underway. notes that drivers need to be careful here. i mean, we should note people are just waking up to this, figuring out how they're going to get to work. this is a major impact for people who who travel throughout this area

every day. >> i'm joined >> by our senior law enforcement analyst, andrew mccabe, who has been helping talk us through what we know, what we don't know, what investigators are going to be looking at here. andy i realized you and you and i have talked through some of this already, but again, we're going to get people joining us throughout these, these two hours here this morning as they're waking up. so let's just kind of reset a little bit at when people look at that video and they see this ship hitting that pylon, a dead-on. they're going to have a lot of questions. what are your questions and what are the questions? trends investigators are going to be asking and how are they going to go about trying to answer them >> sure. well, i mean, like you teed it up. well, casey it starts with looking at that video and you can't look at it without wondering like, how could this possibly have happened? it seem the skill that it would it takes a directly impact column seems to

be far greater than the skillet would take to avoid it as the, as you compare the difference in those spaces, we don't want to suggest that this was an, an, intentional act, but it's of course something that the investigators on the ground who are trying to to understand how this horrible disaster took place are going to want to consider. and of course, the place you start with that is the boat itself. it's a it's a singapore flag vessel which in itself doesn't really tell us very much the way that international shipping is conducted boats are flagged and all sorts of different places. name of the boat is that dollies you can see from those photographs? it's a pretty large container ship, which again, is very typical traffic for this area. there's, of course the mass of port of baltimore where a ton of products and materials stuff is offloaded off the ships exactly

like this. every single day of the year. so this is heavily trafficked. commercial shipping area, which only increases your, your, your questions about like, why did it happen to this ship when so many ships pass through that same space safely? probably hundreds of times a day. i can't do the math on off the top my head here, but it's a lot, right? this is like unbelievably uncommon, so they're going to want to start by talking to those folks on the boat to understand the complete timeline of who was on the boat, who was in what positions, who is actually pi i live in a boat who had access to the controls that could have steered are directed the vessel >> what >> where those folks are from, what their backgrounds are, their training experience, whether or not they've been involved in any prior incidents on this boat or any other boats that they were it's been deployed upon

>> they're going to want to >> know about their conduct leading up to the event whether or not folks have had the required amount of rest, how long they had been working when they'd had their last meal, whether or not they'd ingested any sorts of potentially altering substances like medications or alcohol, or illicit narcotics. again, there's absolutely no indication right now, we're not working on any information that would indicate that that was the case. >> but these are the sorts of >> generalized questions that investigators are going to be asking to get an understanding of what was happening on that boat in the moments leading up to this as we discussed earlier, there's a whole array of technical questions to understand the service record of this vessel the last time it was maintained, whether or not it's ever had any issues in the past relating to its control or direction. they're going to be looking to see if they're gps enabled devices

and monitors on that ship to get more granularity about how and when it was last adjusted. and in terms of its course was this something that happens suddenly as they approached the bridge or was it a was it a errant course that they had been set upon some minutes or even hours before there's just really a universe of mechanical and then more human related questions that they're going to be going into those interviews with. i'm seeing some reporting some line that indicates that the company that owns the vessel has been contacted and is being cooperative and that's really the biggest hurdle. as you try to start an investigation over something like this. >> yeah, cooperation absolutely. key. >> andy, that's so helpful. i want to bring our viewers this i've got a little bit of new reporting up from the united

states coast guard the fifth district. they say that it's a 948 foot container ship. the dalai hit the francis scott key bridge at 01:27 a.m. this morning. and of course, we can see on the video that it subsequently collapsed. it is unknown according to the coast guard at this time, if there were any casualties, we do know that there are 20 people in the water according to the baltimore fire department or at least 20 people in the water, the coast guard says they have multiple response units deployed for active search and rescue as. there are reports of vehicles in the water, we heard that as well from the baltimore city fire department. they say that coast guard units on the scene includes small boats from station annapolis and station curtis bay, and a helicopter from air station at atlantic city. so that gives folks a sense of where these are coming from. of course, annapolis, it's some distance from

baltimore. but if you are in a boat navigating these waters, it feels like part of the universe that is baltimore's inner harbor, the chesapeake bay. the bridges that connect and serve for this region of the united states, it's if it's something you're used to being a part of it does all feel very similar. so annapolis very close by. we also have this justin to cnn, the maryland governor west more has declared a state of emergency in the wake of the collapse of the bridge. and the governor also says that he is in touch with other local officials, including federal officials as well. the transportation secretary, pete buddha, judge, she's also working with the baltimore mayor or the baltimore county executives. he also goes out of his way to thank those first responders who are of course i'm actively engaged right now, putting themselves at risk to try and help the up to 20 people or at

least 20 people that authorities are saying are in the water. that's the taps go river, that this bridge goes across let's bring in i think juliet km is also with us. law enforcement analyst juliet, one of the noteworthy things about this particular crossing is that it is a land bridge as opposed to a tunnel and it is where hazardous materials are typically transported because you'll of course, see anyone driving on any of our major arteries. we'll see that you're not supposed to take hazardous materials into tunnels. the other two major highways that go through this area are tunnels. the i95, the 895, a tunnel that go underneath baltimore in the baltimore harbor respectively. what does this mean for you know, as people are waking up here, i mean, honestly there are a lot of companies that are gonna be affected by this because this route carries a lot of tractor trailers as well. they're going to have to

figure out how to go around. it's going to be disruptive well beyond just what we see here on the waterways that's exactly right. so let's just start with, of course, the recovery is the most important. are individuals that are missing who were in cars. but simultaneously the investigation is andrew was talking about we'll we'll go forward in terms of the flagship it is not a us flag shift and and the personnel on it and how something like this could happen. but then of course this is, now we've got to get, we've got to get a city moving. and safely. and that is the challenge here. so the decision to put hazmat materials and to not have them go into the tunnels as a post 911 decision, this was when cities began to get smarter about hazardous materials, how close hazardous materials would be. two very dense areas. and they started to create alternatives. one of the major alternatives here, of course, is is waterways that you put

the hazardous materials onto waterways. we don't know what the materials are. and so this becomes a very quick pick, an efficient alternative to the tunnels. you don't have them now, so the first question is what is going to happen to presumably hazardous materials and other materials that were not allowed to go in the tunnel, baltimore is a also this is a connected river way. it's going to impact act not just baltimore or areas around baltimore will impact a lot of the east coast. so what you have is the secretary of transportation in dc working with the governor and his emergency management teams has transportation teams, to see what alternatives would be available. i already know that notifications are going out to the private sector about them getting alternative routes because you don't want a lot of votes coming to this area and sort of hanging out because obviously they can't do anything right now and so this is not, this is this is a big

deal in the sense that we have infrastructure and transportation systems that rely on bridges not falling down. let's just another words. they rely on the system staying up. the alternatives tend to be limited. and then i guess i should say the third major factors of course how people will live in the area. the alternative routes are not ideal and so both the governor, local jurisdictions as well as the private sector, are going to have to be flexible in terms of getting people into cars, getting them into work. we know how to do things by zoom. and so you're going to see just a lot of alternative workforce decisions being made because you just want to keep people off the streets. there's no blessing here, but there's a little bit of silver lining that this happened at one in the morning. you don't have greater fatalities, at least of of of cars on the bridge right?

and of course, we do want to note and emphasize an underscore that they are actively working on search and rescue. and those those first responders are actively putting themselves in danger as we watch this unfold on our screens, julia, thank you. standby for me. >> i want to play a little bit of what we're hearing. we're only just starting to get eyewitness testimony in folks who may have been nearby or seen, or been involved with this happening. this is a former baltimore fire official who spoke to one of our affiliates earlier on this morning. watch him >> i live in a community called sunny beach, which is the first community going south from the bridge. and we were awakened with what appeared to be an earthquake and a low along rolling sound of thunder so we woke up and literally we can

look right out on our bedroom window and cdk bridge. but i couldn't see anything because of the darkness and a little bit later got up again to check and us all some emergency the lights in the area and decide to drive up because i'm the old dog and chasing the fire truck and i came up here. and what was in progress? gross was a malte jurisdictional response to a disaster basically a disaster >> indeed alright. i think we were joined now by our gabe cohen, who has spent the early hours of this morning at trying to get onto or into as close to the scene as he possibly can. there you are dave, since we last spoke earlier on this hour, you've obviously are able to been able to find a place to set up what have you learned as you have been trying to talk to officials? obviously, of course, they are actively engaged in trying to rescue the 20 people that they tell us are in the water but

bring us up to speed on what you know >> well, casey, as far as we can tell, this is still very much an active scene and an active search and rescue operation were about maybe a mile away from the bridge. it's hard to tell, but they police have that entire area shutdown. i want to step out of the way and just show you though the view that we have from this backyard along the river here. you can see the key bridge in the distance as you would enter the bridge from the west side of it. and then you can see the point where the bridge just suddenly ends. and just to the right right of that, you can see what looks to be like the container ship still sitting there, parked in the river around it, just pieces of the bridge that have collapsed into the water. and as i look, i don't know if you can tell from your vantage point, but as i looked, i can see a lot of police lights dotting the water. it is hard to tell what's on land and

what's in the water at this point. but we know that we have seen a lot of crews flying by us on the road, making it seem like it is still very much an active scene. and look, we have talked casey about the temperature of the water, 47, 48 degrees. the temperature outside, but i can tell you it's just being here on the side of the river. it is freezing, cold in these early morning hours, the wind is whipping right now. i am in a heavy winter code and i am still cold so you can port the conditions as they appear on a piece of paper, but being out here in the elements, it is certainly freezing cold for anyone who might be in the water, the wind, the waves, i should say, it is choppy the water this morning. this is not some calm lake. this is a a serious river coming in from the chesapeake bay into the harbor in baltimore. so crews would have their hands full out on the water and certainly

these are serious conditions, dangerous conditions for anyone who would have ended up in this water obviously, they're all kinds of scenarios, as you mentioned cruise looking for potentially 20 d people who could have been in the water. we don't have the latest on injuries, but it has been described as a mass casualty event but look, casey, again, out here in the elements, it is brutally cold and dangerous conditions and you just think about the people who might have been affected here, drivers who were on that bridge and the rescuers who are out there trying to save them it is a chilling scene here. >> a chilling scene in so many ways that video, of course, if a moment of the bridge collapsed. we are heading in to the top of the six an hour her