it's right now. >> as one nation, we grieve for every precious soul that has

been taken from us so suddenly. >> president trump speaks this morning after the deadliest commercial plane crash in the u.s. in 24 years. a military helicopter colliding with a passenger jet in our nation's capital. and officials now say there are no survivors. thanks for joining us today for abc seven news at three. i'm kristen sze. the collision killed 67 people. so far, crews have recovered at least 40 bodies from the potomac river. at least one of those was a soldier from the army helicopter. reporter john paul from our sister station. abc's sister station in philadelphia. with more on the recovery mission and the investigation. he is at reagan national airport. reporter. >> the ntsb held a news conference late this afternoon saying they will investigate thoroughly this tragic crash. they are going to look at the humans involved, but also the mechanics involved in this as well. i'm standing here at reagan national airport. the

runway is back open now. the potomac river behind me as i step out of the way, will push in so you can see where they're focused at this point. those boats are around the fuselage. and that blackhawk helicopter sitting in about eight feet of water there in the icy potomac river. a short time ago, sources tell abc news that dive teams ceased operations because they've recovered all the bodies they can without moving the fuselage itself. about 40 have been recovered after last night's tragic crash, dive team suspended their operations tonight after recovering nearly 40 bodies from the wreckage of a passenger jet and army helicopter that collided in mid-air. that moment was caught on camera. you can see a fireball as american eagle flight 5342, with 64 passengers and crew, hit the blackhawk helicopter with three soldiers on board in the nation's capital. the plane was cleared for landing and on final approach when it happened. this is audio from air traffic controllers at reagan national.

>> did you see that? >> after a frantic nighttime effort in the icy waters of the potomac, officials say none of the 67 people survived. >> i have no this point. >> we are all heartbroken. we're all searching for answers. >> president donald trump spoke from the white house this morning, vowing to learn why the blackhawk helicopter and the passenger jet were at the same altitude. >> for some reason, there weren't adjustments made again. you could have slowed down the helicopter substantially. you could have stopped the helicopter. >> the ntsb held a news conference this afternoon saying there will be a thorough investigation. >> and we're here to assure the american people that we are going to leave no stone unturned. >> as for what the army helicopter was doing in the flight path, the new secretary of defense, pete hegseth, says it was a training mission with a very experienced crew. >> routine annual retraining of night flights on a standard corridor for a continuity of government mission. >> on his first day on the job,

the new transportation secretary is vowing to get to the bottom of how this tragedy happened. >> when americans take off in airplanes, they should expect to land at their destination. that didn't happen yesterday. that's unacceptable. >> now, we could be getting some answers relatively soon. the ntsb says they want to have a preliminary report about what exactly happened here within 30 days. they also revealed that they have not yet recovered the black boxes from that passenger jet or from the black hawk helicopter, but really, that's not their focus at this point. their focus is on the humanity getting the bodies out of the water and bringing some closure to the families at reagan national. john paul abc seven news. kristen. >> all right. john. the u.s. figure skating organization confirmed several members of the skating community were among the victims. the group was leaving kansas following the national u.s. figure skating championships and development camps. abc seven news reporter lena howland heard from bay area

skaters who were taking part in those events. >> tragedy. striking the u.s. figure skating community. a u.s. army blackhawk helicopter collided with an american airlines flight over the potomac river in d.c. wednesday night. by thursday morning, officials confirmed there were no survivors. >> to the best of our knowledge, 14 skaters returning home from the national development camp at wichita, kansas, put on by u.s. figure skating, were lost in the plane crash at washington, d.c. >> six of the victims were from the skating club of boston, including teenage athletes, their moms, and a married set of coaches. >> they were our future. so it was like it was mostly really promising. promising future skaters that passed away and their parents. >> 24 year old anthony ponomarenko is a san jose native. he was in kansas competing in the national figure

skating championships, even snapping this candid photo with other competitors from the rink. he woke up to a frantic call from his parents at 3 a.m. >> first, the media outlets mentioned a whole bunch of names and i was one of them. so my parents called me panicked, thinking i could have potentially been on that flight. >> he had already left for ontario by monday when his time at the championships was over. >> it was shocking. i honestly like didn't know how to cope. i didn't sleep from from the moment my parents called me until i didn't sleep. so it was it was tough. and then to find out who was actually on that flight, it was it was pretty heartbreaking. >> in san francisco, lena howland, abc seven news. >> retired u.s. olympic figure skater nancy kerrigan is an alum of the skating club of boston. she made an emotional statement this morning about the collision and the victims.

>> not sure how to process it. oh, shoot. i'm sorry. no, no. okay. which is why i'm h feel for the athletes, the skaters and their families. but anyone that was on that plane. >> kerrigan says she stayed up all night watching the news of the disaster unfold, and rushed to the skating club this morning to support her fellow athletes. captain chesley sully sullenberger, who is known for the 2009 miracle landing on the hudson river, was on gma this morning. here's his response to the question how could something like this happen? >> we have in this country, you know, 10,000 flights a day, you know, 10.2 million to flights a year. and we operate them all safely. but it's hard it's hard to have the diligence and the dedication to adhere to best

practices on every minute of every hour of every day, every week, every month, every year for a decades long aviation career. that's what's required. and any lapse could potentially be fatal. even though we have a lot of safety layers in there. if all the dominoes line up in the wrong way, we can have, on rare occasions, a catastrophic event. >> sullenberger, who is from the bay area and resides in the east bay, added that the chances of being in an airline crash are extremely small, and there are tens of thousands of people who work every day to keep passengers safe. we are continuing to monitor every development about this deadly midair collision in washington, d.c. find the latest on abc seven news.com and our abc seven bay area app. we are going to shift gears here and turn our attention to the weather because the changes coming, we're keeping a close eye on the forecast with rain set to return by tomorrow. as we take a live

look outside, you can see a lot of clouds building and that will turn to wet weather. our first rain is in several or will be our first rain in several weeks. abc seven news meteorologist drew tuma has the latest. >> it's been quite some time since we've been tracking a storm out there in the pacific. there you can clearly see this area of low pressure that will be moving in. it's going to tap into some tropical moisture that's connected to hawaii. and that's why we're seeing some heavier showers move in here by saturday. gets that tropical connection that atmospheric river. looking at the rainfall the next seven days, a lot of us outside of the north bay, 1 to 3in of rain. and a lot of this falls during the day on saturday. and then another round of heavy rain coming on tuesday in the north bay. we're seeing higher totals. some areas in the north bay could pick up more than four inches of rain, and that could cause some issues, especially once we get those ground pretty saturated out there. when it comes to snowfall through the weekend, a lot of this falling on saturday, we'll see about 2 to 3ft of snow. watch what happens next week. we

get even higher totals. these are some huge numbers we're looking at. so a lot of new snow is coming to our snowpack back here at home tomorrow. it's a level one for steady morning rain, scattered afternoon showers and tomorrow the biggest impact will be those slick roadways in that slower travel. so future weather just beginning to show you that light rain as the sun gets up here. then throughout the morning that rain becomes steady. we'll pick up anywhere from a 2:45 quarters of an inch of rain tomorrow, with a bit of a lull late tomorrow night. but then the action really intensifies. so here's saturday morning. the rain is back in a big way, and we'll track heavier downpours later on in the afternoon and some strong gusty winds. and it's at this time to saturday that we could be dealing with some nuisance flooding on our area roadways and those strong gusty winds as well. here's future tracker wind speeds showing you saturday morning as that atmospheric river moves in winds gusting 30 40mph. so we could have some isolated power outages and some trees coming down, especially once the ground is saturated. it's a little bit easier to

knock these trees down. here's the accuweather seven day forecast showing you we're dry today. the storm preps should be done by tonight. rain is here tomorrow and once it's here it sticks around the wettest and the windiest days on the seven day forecast will be on saturday and then again on tuesday. that's when it's a level two on the storm impact scale. of course we'll keep you updated with the details, but this is a forecast you do want to check in every day to see the latest changes. >> take drew's advice and track the rain throughout the weekend. with the abc seven bay area app. you can get the latest forecast and look at the same live doppler seven radar our weather team uses. just search abc seven bay area and your device's app store to download it now. up next, more on the deadly mid-air collision in washington, dc. as the recovery mission continues. the investigation into what went wrong is just beginning. an aviation expert will join us to discuss his experienc you can access your fico® score in a snap. (daughter) what i would give to be able

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in washington, d.c. so many questions, including ones about the staffing at the control tower. joining us live now to share his expertise and help us make sense of this tragedy. former sfo spokesman, retired navy commander. officer commanding officer, tactical officer. so many titles and hats that you wore. you're also an aviation expert. mike mccarron, thank you for coming on the show today. >> my pleasure. >> look, mike, new york times is now reporting it's seen an internal faa report that shows control tower staffing was not normal during the crash. that one controller was doing a job, usually handled by two. if that's true, would that be a very unusual or alarming situation at all?

>> i don't know, it would be unusual to alarming, but the faa has had trouble staffing air traffic controller positions for some time. uh. over the past few years, several of the controllers who were hired following the strike during the reagan era qualified for mandatory retirement. and so they had to be phased out. and i don't think the faa has ever gotten back up to their allotted quota of what they should have. and all the towers throughout the nation. >> all right. i mean, what do you think could one extra person in that control tower have helped avoid this mishap? based on the communications that you've heard? >> it wouldn't have hurt. it would have had, you know, an extra person carrying the load. but, you know, there from time to time, every tower is shorthanded because of sickness or just normal staffing issues. people rotating around throughout the nation. there's a reason there's a minimum staffing level, but you know, you deal with what you have and you make the best of it that time of night, there's not a lot

of traffic coming in, so they could probably get by with someone carrying, you know, two positions in the tower. >> okay. defense secretary sean duffy, only second day on the job, said the passenger plane and the blackhawk were following standard flight paths. if that is so, does it raise any questions for you about those flight paths? i mean, should they be adjusted? >> well, they were, if that's what they were, on the correct flight path. but for some reason they got too close together. obviously that's the big issue right now. they may be on the right path, but at the wrong time. and i think that's where you have to look at the controllers, the radar plots, to see why they were allowed to get that close together without somebody noticing it before the catastrophe occurred. so it's, you know, you could both be on the same road and but if you collide, you did something wrong. and so i think that's what they have to look at right now, is who was at the right spot and who was at the wrong spot. >> right. and for something like this to happen, could it just be one thing, one person, one party

that failed? or usually it's multiple layers. >> more often than not, especially in the times i've looked at the incident reports in the navy, it's a daisy chain of events, a series of events that just kind of add up and keep snowballing along. and, and then you have an incident like this. and more often than not, as i said, if you pull one of these links out of that chain, the incident doesn't occur. so i think that's what the ntsb is really going to go in heavy for. look at the manning, the in the tower, look at the routes they're flying. look at the weather. everything involved maintenance records of the aircraft and put the all these pieces back together to create a good idea of what happened here. >> how complicated is the job of keeping airplanes off each other? coordinating the runways right there was the 2017 near-disaster at sfo, when an air canada flight was cleared to land on one runway, but nearly landed on a different runway where four planes were waiting to take off. and that investigation ultimately showed pilot fatigue. as one of the factors. is that common? >> well, fatigue is common. i

think in any industry right now, everyone's working massive amount of hours as far as keeping the aircraft separate, it is an issue. it's a challenging issue. the people who make the into the towers of the busiest airports are the best of the best, but they're human and they're they're susceptible to making mistakes. you can create an automated system, a machine or something that does the same thing every time, forever. but every time you bring humans in, you have another factor that while you can train them, instruct them, you know, give them everything you need to do to do the right, the right job. we're all prone to make mistakes, and unfortunately, these mistakes are critical and life threatening. >> this commercial plane was flown by psa airlines, a regional carrier that flies under the american banner. and some people are asking if pilots for regional airlines are maybe less experienced, or if those planes are less safe. what is your opinion? >> the planes are not less safe. the pilots generally have less

hours than a commercial pilot flying for united or american or delta, but the only way you get more hours is to fly. so no one starts their mission, their your career. with 5000 hours. you start with zero hours and you work your way up. and i think that's just it's part of the business. you only get better at your job by doing it. so the pilots had probably the average amount of hours for flying a regional jet. and we're hoping someday to move on to a mainline carrier. so i think the number of hours is somewhat irrelevant. they had the minimum number of hours to fly under the faa rules and regulations, and they were doing what they were supposed to be doing. >> last year, congress approved more flights at reagan national, despite some lawmakers warning it would be too dangerous. those added flights, as i understand, will begin soon. is that a good idea? is that airport at max capacity? and i guess if the answer is yes there, i wonder if over the years sfo has gotten busier. >> well, i'll answer your last question first. sfo has gotten

dramatically busier over the past several years. when i was there, you know, the number of flights has gone up probably 20, 30% over the past 15 years. and the number of passengers matches that as well. so i think there's a demand for air travel. our population has grown and the need for more travel has grown. so whether or not national can handle them, i excuse me, i don't know their specific. pardon me needs or requirements, but the planners there know what they can handle and we'll adapt accordingly. >> all right, mike, i'm going to let you go. i think you got what i had a few weeks ago. >> that ticked up on me. >> but thank you for, you know, dealing with that and talking with us and sharing the information. really appreciate it, mike. >> my pleasure as always. kristin. >> we'll continue to follow this. and up next, an investigation into a different story. the burn unit at saint francis hospital in san francisco. what they're accused

of doing that appears to go against an agreement that was made with the state. our media partner, the san francisco

has uncovered a questionable practice at the city's only burn unit. ucsf health runs the burn unit at saint francis hospital after acquiring it last summer. the standard has a new article out detailing how the unit had been quietly sending children to child patients to other hospitals since last fall, until the standard started asking questions. joining us live now with more on the investigation and the potential fallout is jen wadsworth, senior news editor for the standard. jen, thanks for joining us. >> thanks for having me. >> how and why did you begin looking into the practices at the burn unit? >> so we got a tip that services had been suspended, and i wasn't quite sure for how long that had been going on, so i, i inquired late last week about, you know, how long patients hadn't been

seen there where they were going. i didn't get any answers. and then the uc health kept asking for more time to give me an official statement. and then on tuesday, after they reinstated services, they gave me an official statement saying that it's no longer a problem. we're accepting pediatric patients again. >> yeah. walk us through that arrangement. right. what it was supposed to be. what was actually happening, which you kind of touched on here, but more details on that. >> yeah, it's a little unclear because uc health hasn't been all that transparent about it. you know, it's possible that they plan to reinstate pediatric burn admissions on that day, you know, but the timing and the fact that it happened after we started inquiring about it just made it look very reactive. and the message that they gave us after the fact didn't really include much in the way of detail. they accept that they stopped accepting burn children temporarily so they could implement unspecified new protocols. >> so how many kids are we talking about and where were they being sent? >> i'm not sure about the number of children. this is a unit that

treats 500 people, children and adults every year. and it takes for pediatric patients. it takes them from san francisco proper, but also the north bay, the peninsula and surrounding region. so during this three month pause they were being sent to, they were stabilized at zuckerberg general and then sent to either valley med in san jose or shriners in sacramento at uc davis. >> why was that a problem? >> i think for a lot of people, you know, you're talking about if it's an inpatient care, you're talking about badly burned children who have lengthy hospital stays require really intensive treatment. and so for a family who maybe can't necessarily afford to take time off work and make an hour drive to go spend time with their children, it can be very disruptive and it could be very costly. and a lot of, you know, families can't afford to take time off work, or they might have other children to care for. so it puts an undue strain on some of some of the patients. >> i see. and we understand after you inquired, it seems

like they're back up accepting pediatric burn patients. but i wonder, you know, if that will continue. and is this a reflection of a larger problem in the u.s, that of the disappearing burn units? >> yeah, exactly. and i think that, again, because of the lack of transparency here, we don't know if this is going to happen again and how long they're going to keep accepting patients. i think there's another question about compliance with their commitment. uc health made a commitment when they bought two hospitals. and, you know, san francisco was one of them. that includes the burn unit that they would maintain staffing and services. they would keep it consistent for at least a decade after the purchase. so that commitment sunsets in 2034. and it's an open question of whether sending kids away for acute care outside the city counts as a cut in service, and whether or not that's a violation of this commitment they made, which was signed and sealed with in a pact that with the california attorney general. >> all right. jen wadsworth, senior news editor for the

standard, thank you so much for sharing your story with us. >> thank you for having me. >> you can check out jen's story and more of the san francisco standard's other original reporting on their website as of st a team can help you plan for your dreams. so your dream car, and vacation home, may be closer than you think. ready to meet the dream team? you can with wells fargo.

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have put two snake statues on display outside san francisco's chase center as part of the lunar new year celebrations. look at that. the serpent at thrive city features warriors gold and blue colors, and includes a basketball with three stars to symbolize the franchise hosting its third nba all star game on february 16th. the statues will be on display until march 2nd. abc seven is the official broadcast partner of the 2025 san francisco chinese new year parade. you can watch the live parade saturday, february 15th, starting at 6 p.m. right here on abc seven and wherever you stream seven news. just want to tell you again, because it's going to be so much fun. you don't want to miss it. thanks for joining us for abc seven news at three. world news tonight, a special edition of "world news tonight." the deadliest air disaster in the u.s. in more than two decades. the midair collision right here