right now on "andrea mitchell reports," thousands are dead in turkey and syria as

rescue crews on both sides of the border continue the frantic search for survivors. also, tensions rising between the united states and china after the biden administration shot down that chinese spy balloon saturday afternoon and criticism from top republicans for the president's decision not to shoot it down sooner. all this as the president puts the final touches on his state of the union address when he's expected to tout his accomplishments including a better than predicted campaign and a preview of his election campaign. good day. as a tragedy of epic proportions is unfolding in turkey and syria, a massive 7.2 earthquake taking nearly 2,000 lives already and devastating commercial and residential areas of both countries. there are also nearly 10,000 people injured and possibly

hundreds more still trapped under the rubble from decimated buildings as the aftershocks rip through the region and hinder rescue efforts. those are live pictures in southern turkey of a rescue effort now underway trying to find survivors in that rubble. experts say the destruction of this was equivalent to 32 hiroshimas. president biden tweeting this morning, i am deeply saddened by the loss of life and devastation caused by the earthquake in turkey and syria. i have directed my team to continue closely monitoring the situation in coordination with turkey and provide any and all needed assistance. megan fitzgerald joins me now and the regional senior manager for the international rescue committee. we've been watching these incredible pictures. the heroics of rescue crews working through the night, digging through the rubble for more than 15 hours.

what can you tell us about how night has fallen, how they're doing in terms of trying to find survivors? >> reporter: well, as you know, this is an all hands on deck operation as they search quickly as possible to try and find survivors that are trapped under the rubble. what we are seeing here is complete and utter destruction and devastation in both syria and turkey. where we know collectively some 3,000 buildings collapsed. more than 2200, that number continues to rise in terms of that death toll. we know thousands of people are injured. thousands more though rushing to the area to try and help. you just look at these devastating images coming in from turkey, for example, where these buildings are collapsed. people trapped underneath the rubble. families screaming for their loved ones. first responders as we talked about rushing there trying to rescue these people while also asking people to remain silent so they can hear the voices of people screaming for help as these search and rescue missions are just continuing and then of

course, a similar situation in syria. we know that the military there has activated all of their units to the northern part of the country to try and help. we heard from the civil defense spokesperson who was practically in tears as he talked about the need for the world to come and help syria, help his people. this is just a devastating situation. but we know help is really on the way here. as you mentioned, president biden from the united states, the president of turkey saying some 45 countries have already reached out to help including war torn ukraine. president zelenskyy also offering aid to send in search and rescue crews, but andrea, the world really is watching. just a terrible humanitarian crisis unfold. >> just unbelievable. thank you so much. and elias, this is a region that's been dealing with the refugee crisis. i was there with ambassador greenfield and seeing the people there, 12,000 people in a

refugee camp who were starving and needing the food that was being blocked by russia potentially when she was working to open those humanitarian corridors. for years now, they've been caught between isis and the different factions and now we're seeing this devastation in these cities and these refugee camps. in this very area. >> thank you very much, andrea, for having me and as you said, it is absolutely a tragedy. i mean, we're talking about over 4 million people living at least in northwest syria and these people have been going through one crisis to another. we recently had a cholera outbreak and before that, we've been always advocating for the need to support the economy and there's inflation and covid-19. recently, it's snow and it just survived a snowstorm. so the situation couldn't have been more horrific for these populations. the needs are immense. we've already been talking about

having at least 3 million people in need of urgent assistance and now we're trying to rescue those who are trapped under rubble and we have a case with irc more than 1,000 staff. we called in survivors because we are trying to make sure they're safe. our partners on the ground are also safe and we're able to do the relief work that we need, that we have to do in order to cover the gaps and rescue lives. >> it occurs to me that one of the closest neighbors with expertise in all of this is israel. to turkey at least. they've gone with their dogs and disaster zones around the world. to try to find cadavers or survivors more importantly. do you think that despite past tensions, that turkey would allow israel if they were to offer? >> to be honest, i cannot really speak personally from that

regard. i can, what i can say is that we welcome all humanitarian support for all these people who are trapped because at the end of the day, we want to have these people live a dignified life and safe one and to insure they are reunited with those who are still missing because numbers, it's tremendous. and we do need to call for support from the international community. to assure those are safe. >> the international rescue committee as always on the spot and doing great work for people in huge need. i can't think of anything more needy than this. megan, elias, thank you very much. officials say that it's going to take days to complete the search from that downed balloon as the fbi begins an intelligence assessment of just what were the chinese looking for. navy divers have been searching the shallow waters and officials hopeful they may find the intelligence pod in tact. chinese leaders are calling the action unacceptable and

irresponsible, ramping up i should say the sense of outrage they claim while republican lawmakers are outraged, they're slamming president biden, they say, for waiting days too long before destroying the balloon before it got over the atlantic. >> you have to act swiftly on these things. that's one of the things the chinese are trying to message which is that u.s. had to see this coming and decided they couldn't or wouldn't do anything about it early on. >> the president taking it down over the atlantic is like tackling the quarterback after the game is over. >> joining me is dan, janice in china and jeremy bash, former chief of staff to leon panetta at the pentagon and cia. dan, do intelligence officials know what this balloon was doing and are you learning anything new from your sources as we've both been reporting this for the last few days about what china might have been getting and how

do they mitigate the damage by covering up and hiding and taking other measures as it was passing over montana. >> they're cautiously optimistic they're going to retrieve the committee and intelligence on that balloon relatively in tact. it's the administration's justification for shooting it down when they did. their argument is not only were they trying to first and foremost, prevent risk to civilians on the ground, but by shooting it over water, this equipment would be more likely to be in tact. i think one part of this balloon phenomena is that this is part of a trend in surveillance technology. not just in china, but in the u.s. and elsewhere, which is yes, sophisticated satellites are fundamental and used heavily

and very advanced, but there's also a view now to have drones and balloon, which are much cheaper and can be more numerous and add to a mosaic of intelligence coming in. the u.s. does say they were aware of these balloons, but i think it will be interesting to see what they find precisely on that balloon and how much is going on we weren't told publicly. >> janice, we've seen the rhetoric escalate. there was supposed to be an important meeting with secretary of state blinken and xi this weekend, the first in nearly six years. so have you been able to figure out from your experience and your reporting, did president xi know? was he deliberately blowing up the meeting knowing it couldn't be held under these circumstances because he was upset about the recently announced new american bases in the philippines to counteract of

course any potential invasion of taiwan from the mainland or was this done by the military at a lower level without informing the foreign ministry or the president's office of the timing of this foray? >> a lot of the discussion here has been china accusing the u.s. of overreacting. of using indiscriminate use of force. of warning of repercussions. they lodged a formal complaint at the u.s. embassy here with the ambassador. what china is not saying is anything about the balloon itself to shore up this claim that it's not a military surveillance air ship. that it's a civilian craft, that it got lost while it was looking for information about the weather. the foreign ministry also confirm that had the second balloon spotted over latin america is also chinese.

it's also civilian. it also blew off course. what isn't clear at this point is whether the chinese leadership wants to escalate a situation that they maintain was accidental. a lot of the commentary here has been framing what the u.s. did as provocation. as an attack. while on social media, the u.s. is actually being mocked for overreacting. clearly, this is a setback though for u.s.-china relations. the secretary of state was suppose to be meeting today with chinese officials, probably xi, and this is an embarrassment for him. xi has been trying in diplomatic moves to appear more willing to stabilize relations with western nations. he needs to in order to address a lot of the challenges that are building here domestically. the key one being trying to revive the economy after three years and zero covid concerns.

that the, china spying on the u.s. and vice versa is really no secret and that there is some level of engagement between the two sides right now. can be seen as an improvement over recent years, but what isn't clear is whether china will exercise these further effort repercussions and exactly what their options would be, but certainly flying a spy balloon right over the heads of americans is seen as a blunder and a setback. >> and jeremy bash, so why would the chinese be using balloons? they have satellites. and do you think there's anything to this report "the new york times" yesterday that there had been a classified briefing recently about ariel surveillance using new technologies. didn't say specifically it was china, but one of our adversaries, doing something with ariel surveillance that

they hadn't before. could there be a connection? >> i can't comment about that sensitive reporting, but what i can tell you is these air ships, and they're not really referred to as balloons. they're air ships. they can hover over one place for much longer than a satellite can. so they can have long dwell, persistent surveillance. second is, they're much cheaper to field. you don't have to fire a rocket into space. you don't have to launch a billion dollar satellite. so therefore, they're much harder to detect when they launch. they kind of can sneak up on you and if the chinese can fuel them in quantity as opposed to high quality, they could potentially accept the risk of having a few shot down and still drive some intelligence benefit from it. we're going to have to develop a capability to bring these air ships down from high altitude safely on land.

i don't think the chinese were able to get a lot more information they could already get from their satellites, so i don't think our national security was harmed, but going forward, we're going to need a capability to deal with this threat. >> is there any way that this air ship should have been taken down? what the defense department, the pentagon is saying very vigorously in their pushback against the republicans, is that they tried to minimize any deaths to the children, to spouses, whatever, women and children, when they're going of an isis terrorist. so if they're doing that, wouldn't, isn't it defensible that they would not want to take down something that was a size of three buses, the pod itself. take down something that could have hit a school or a church or a farmhouse. >> well, the united states has not shot at another country's aircraft since world war ii. since pearl harbor. and that was over hawaii and hawaii wasn't even a state then. the air force didn't exist.

so this is completely unprecedented that the air force would be called upon to shoot down another country's air ship over our own territory and if the united states military, if you're general millie or van herk, the assessment they're going to have to make is that the debris field could be three fields wide, debris falling down potentially on hospitals and kindergartens, is that risk worth taking or can we jam the commune cases link, which the military said they were able to do. can we ensure this is not going to collect any sensitive intelligence? can we take counterintelligence measures on the ground and safely bring it down over water? i think the military did an excellent, professional job. could we have shot it down earlier? if safely, we should have. the military's judgment was that it was much safer to do it over water. >> when we look at this big picture, i reported that there

were two planes circling it. could they have been gaining a lot of intelligence since they have spy planes taking pictures at close range of this thing as it was traveling across the united states? >> undoubtedly once that air ship can go down to 50 or 60,000 feet and some reports indicated it was meant to operate much higher but that it had drifted lower. that presents an opportunity as you reported for our own high altitude spy planes, manned or unmanned, get a close look at this, how it was steered, what the motors looked like, what the sensors looked like. i think we're going to derive a lot of valuable information from collecting the debris in the water. in all respects, i have to agree with the previous reports. this was a major unforced error and blunder by china. i don't know if they meant to do it or meant to, but it was a massive setback for their intelligence collections program. i think around the world, we can be talking about china's invasion of sovereignty and this provides the united states with

an important upper moral hand. >> this was not something that drifted. yes, the jet stream carries it, but we know that it was manageable. it was tacking the way a sailboat would tack. it went over canada eastward then took a sharp turn down through idaho to cross back into u.s. space. >> i think we knew it was directly being steered so we had to take it down. >> thanks to all of you. and new rules. the first big change to the presidential primary calendar in half a century at the 2024 race for the white house slowly starts to take shape. you're watching "andrea mitchell reports." that's next on msnbc. g "andrea l reports. that's next on msnbc [♪♪] if you have diabetes, it's important to have confidence in the nutritional drink you choose. try boost glucose control®. it's clinically shown to help manage blood sugar levels and contains high quality protein to help manage hunger and support muscle health. try boost® today. think he's posting about all that ancient roman coinage?

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th just into the white house. john kirby is briefing reporters right now, but already has told reporters according to all wires from this briefing that the

white house is sending two, 79-person search and rescue teams to turkey and syria where those earthquakes or gone, or at least the turkey where the turkey and syria earthquakes have taken place, so the white house is already moving people to try to get there to help in the rescue for the horrendous earthquake. here at home, democrats are overhauling their primary calendar for 2024 bumping hawaii and new hampshire in order to elevate non-white and southern voters in choosing a presidential nominee. in all goes to plan, democrats will say good-bye to the iowa caucuses to make south carolina the first presidential nominating state. this move after south carolina helped propel joe biden to securing the nomination in 2020. new hampshire, nevada, georgia, and michigan would follow. although both new hampshire and georgia say that they need more time to comply. south carolina congressman james

clyburn reacted to the news on jonathan capehart's show sunday. >> i think that south carolina and michigan, georgia, nevada all should be brought into the mix because you've got african americans and then south carolina is as rural as iowa. the vast majority of african americans in this country still live in the south. >> and joining me now is former democratic congressman, donna edwards and brendan buck, former communications adviser to speakers ryan and boehner. very happy they and south carolina have really been forces. this has been going on for decades, donna, trying to remove iowa, which became famous and placed first after jimmy carter successfully got the nomination. sort of a long shot candidate. back in 1972. so, in 1976, excuse me.

and then new hampshire of course has always, more than a century, right? been first. so there's some bitter feelings. iowa senator tweeting that democrats are giving a middle, giving middle america the middle finger, excuse me. and new hampshire's democratic party pointing out their law requires them to hold the first in the nation primary. so this is not exactly settled, they say. brendan, americans for the prosperity, the political arm of the koch network is coming out against donald trump in a major way without mentioning his name, but donna, first, let's talk about the democrats and the whole democratic fray. >> look, i think that this new calendar makes so much sense for democrats. they reflect a geographic diversity, the ethnic diversity you see in these states. you can still get small states

like new hampshire that come early, but also states that have more racial diversity like south carolina. then on top of that, you get a good percentage in nevada of latino voters, which i think is really important to the entire array of the democratic caucus. and you get rid of the democratic party and you get rid of the caucus states, which are problematic anyway because working people have a really difficult time participating in those and you have primary states. so i think this actually really works well. particularly for the base of the democratic party. which is really important to try to gauge their participation. and i think can generate excitement in the, during the primary season. so you know, these states, new hampshire and georgia have an opportunity until june to make sure that their state laws are in compliance with this new calendar, but boy, does it

really make sense for the democratic party. >> so brandon, the republicans are sticking to iowa and new hampshire. there is still going to be a rush to iowa around new year's and of course, the first week in january to new hampshire. but meanwhile, americans for the prosperity, this koch group, the political arm, is coming out against donald trump in a big way without mentioning his name. their sunday statement reading we've got to turn the page. the best thing for the country would be to have a president in 2025 who represents a new chapter. they add the republican party is nominating bad candidates who are advocating for things that go against core american principles anned the american people are rejecting them. so how much power do they have? >> yeah, my first reaction is add this to the pile of money, establishment interests who want to move on from trump. americans for prosperity has resources that are important. a there are a lot of groups out

there that have resources that are ready to move on from donald trump. donald trump has never gotten his power from those groups. from the money interest in the party. he's gotten them from the grass roots, the base. voters that never voted in the republican party, they don't seem necessarily ready to move on. in iowa, there are people ready to turn the page. i assume nikki hailey thinks that's a message that works, at least she's tested it. that donald trump's too old. that joe biden's too old. that's potentially a good message, but if you still have 30% of the party who will never leave him, it still leaves him in a very strong position. a lot of people are ready for this. the question is how many people are going to get in. how much is that field going to splinter and is he going to benefit from the way he did last time? sticking with his 30% of die hards and maybe that will be enough to put him over the top.

>> we had a lively discussion on "meet the press" about this. what is nikki hailey's lane. being a person of youth, a person of color, the south carolina governor's experience and foreign policy experience with donald trump. but finding a more independent lane, you know. there might be room for someone like hailey. maybe not. asa hutchison, larry hogan from maryland and a whole lot of anti-trump candidates maybe a way for him in a multiparty race to come through with that 35%. >> yeah. look, i don't disagree with that at all. the question is how big is that lane and how many people are going to try to get in. maybe that's why hailey came out first saying i'm going to be that person. party has changed a lot in the last eight years. it's much populous and less traditional. certainly she represents a

strong foreign policy and we are a party that's more isolationist. i think she'd be a great general election candidate for all the reasons you talk about. it's just you have to get through the primary first and there are probably a lot of people who say i want to get us back to those more traditional places. >> thanks to both. and busted. after the downing of the chinese spy balloon or air ship, will republicans use the dust up to take the air out of the president's state of the union address? democratic congressman jim hines joins me next. democratic congressman jim hines joins me next. in your hands or feet? try nervivenerve relief from the world's #1 selling nerve care company. nervive contains alpha lipoic acid to relieve occasional nerve aches, weakness and discomfort. try nervivenerve relief. [ sneezing ] are you okay? oh, it's just a cold. if you have high blood pressure, a cold is not just a cold. coricidin is the #1 doctor recommended cold and flu brand. specially designed for people with high blood pressure.

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questions continue to -- about the journey across the u.s. >> clearly, this was an attempt by china to gather information to defeat our command and control of our sensitive missile defense and nuclear weapons sites and that certainly is an urgency this administration doesn't recognize. >> joining me now is democratic congressman, jim hines. the top democratic member of the intelligence committee. congressman, thanks for being with us. what say you to the pentagon's defense that we collected a lot of intelligence on what they were doing and that they did not get as much in crossing the country as they can get from any of their satellites, which are constantly up there. >> i'll know is answer to that question this week when we get briefed on the decision making process. there's a lot of people coming to me based on conclusions

instead of facts. the president was given advice about not shooting it down over the continental united states. it has a safety factor and there's immense intelligence value in watching an asset like this behave. its maneuverability, collectiblety, emission characteristics. then we're covering it hopefully more or less in tact. so none of us really know what the decision making process was or what the decision making process may have been when apparently these balloons straight over the continental united states in the previous administration, but i expect we'll be briefed. >> what i've been told by previous officials is that the previous administration was not aware of it. it was only after the fact that officials and intelligence went back, did the forensics and saw there would be incursions but they were brief. the kind of probes that russian fighter jets do on our west coast or around our borders.

to the north and not anything like coming back from canada into idaho then southeast across the rest of the country. >> there's no question that what the chinese have done was an incredible brazen act. that's not in dispute here. again, we'll find out what sorts of intelligence we gathered from the observation from it in action as well as what we can recover off the coast of south carolina. the story remains to be told here. i would also point out that you know, people are asking whether this radically changes our relationship with china. the reality is that the united states and china are both spending immense resources trying to steal each other secrets, trying to surveil each other. what is pretty unusual here is the brazenness of flying an aircraft over the continental united states. we need to understand if it was

a mistake, deliberate and if deliberate, why. there's still a lot to be learned. >> what do we know about what kind of intelligence gathering it was doing? is it possible it was doing some high, new technology, whether it's drones or some other form of surveillance that we're not even aware of? >> of course that's possible and again, i would caution viewers of any show that i'm not sure that really anybody in this building has been briefed on what was found. but of course, it's always possible that there was novel technology. we understand this technology pretty well, also. but you know, i could give you speculative reasons for why you might want a balloon. both nations have satellites. they move quickly. a balloon gives you an opportunity to hover on over a location and a less far from a target. we'll know more this week and what its capabilities were, which is why we're happy to have recovered this thing and

hopefully get some sense for was this a mistake or deliberate provocation by china. >> have you figured out what president xi was up to in that regard as to whether or not they actually wanted to blow up the meeting with secretary blinken? >> it's devilishly hard to get at the intentions of a foreign leader. having recovered this balloon, we may have some sense of whether it was communicating with china or some other chinese military asset. we may be able to reconstruct some of what went down. my speculation is that this was a mistake. no country wants its assets to fall into the hands of another country. hopefully we'll know more as we get a chance to really scrutinize this asset. >> was there an advantage to the fact we had, i am told, spy

planes circling the balloon as it traversed the united states? >> well, you can be certain we kept a close eye on it. and good monitoring of what sorts of transmissions it might have been making. again, we'll come to a conclusion about whether shooting it down earlier or later made sense, but one thing is undeniable. the opportunity to watch it in action. to observe it, get a sense of its capabilities is valuable and i'm sure we collected that information. >> what about the republican complaint that congress should have been notified right away even if you department have a full briefing, congress left town on schedule. the staff was given information, but frankly they did not come out with a briefing until my colleague was about to report this. >> it's a good and fair question. sitting as i do as ranking member of the intelligence committee, i never like hearing

about things in the press or on cable news networks. it's a fair question and one that not just republicans, but democrats like myself will be answering. really looking at the decision making process after the balloon was picked up and what we think about it. >> is it similar to on the classified documents they went from november for months without telling anyone until cbs reported it had happened? why don't they get out in front of these things? >> i'm not going to speculate, you know, on something i don't know about which is decision making around those documents inside the president's office. my guess would be it's a totally different group of people in the pentagon who were advising the president on this stuff. but it's a really good question. look, this was not something that was ever going to be secret. you didn't even need a particularly powerful pair of binoculars to see this thing. why did the administration, what was it's thinking and rationale for informing us when it did. totally fair question.

>> congressman himes, thanks for being with us. and state of the union. a preview of the president's speech tomorrow night and how it might be a preview for whether he decides to run. to run. ♪♪ the only thing i regret about my life was hiring local talent. if i knew about upwork. i would have hired actually talented people from all over the world. instead of talentless people from all over my house.

with powerful, easy-to-use tools power e*trade makes complex trading easier react to fast-moving markets with dynamic charting and a futures ladder that lets you place, flatten, or reverse orders so you won't miss an opportunity working on the state of the union speech tweeting out this photo, the question now, how tough will he be on china with this new, new crisis and controversy over the balloon as this is expected to be the unofficial kickoff of his re-election campaign. joining me now is nbc news white house correspondent, monica alba. sabrina, white house reporter for the "washington journal." monica, how is the biden administration delay in messaging over the spy balloon

going to impact, if at all, the president's state of the union address? >> i think the topic of china is something that was going to be a part of this speech long before this balloon incident, but of course everything that took place over the last couple of days adds a level of importance and urgency here. i'm told by the white house that of course the u.s. continues to consider the relationship with china as one of the most consequential bilateral ones that it has worldwide, but that certainly what happened over the last couple of days with the surveillance balloon did nothing to improve that relationship. but it also didn't necessarily change things when it comes to wanting to work with china, continuing a strategy of competition with china, and so i think you're going to see those larger themes reflected under these foreign policy umbrellas in the speech that speaks specifically to president biden wanting to reassert america's leadership on the world stage. will there be a specific mention of everything that just took place? i think that is still being worked out. will there be some implication

of what just happened and again, what the u.s. views as this complete inappropriate action to come into u.s. air space. that's something that's still being worked on. i'm told this speech is nowhere near finalized, which is not unusual for the president in major addresses. he usually likes to work on these things up until the deadline with his team of speech writers, so i think this is just one area in which the president will talk about largely the goals here, but he'll also be talking about so many other major foreign policy challenges. so it's not like there's going to be just one section on china. you're also going to hear so much about ukraine, the war there. and about of course other major concerns worldwide. but this is a white house that did just hold a call with the national security spokesman, john kirby, who wanted to reiterate that the u.s. feels confidence in whatever they're going to be able to recover from the balloon debris when they are able to do that and confirm it, will prove to be incredibly valuable. that's really the next step in this as the white house continues to deal with the fallout and in response to some

of the criticism they received from republicans over the weekend saying the president didn't act fast enough, the white house reiterated they felt the president did everything in consultation with the pentagon, that they were on the same page and had to do this when it was most appropriate. >> sabrina, we're anticipating he's going to tout his accomplishments. certainly infrastructure, right? >> yes. this is coming at a time when there's a poll suggesting a majority of americans don't actually believe that president biden has done much since taking office and that's something that the white house is eager to counter. they're going to use this as an opportunity for the president to sell his accomplishments for the first two years in office. we've seen him do that as he ramps up travel, promoting the implementation of his infrastructure law. they see this as an opportunity for the president to draw a contrast with the new house

majority amid a standoff over the debt ceiling and the president really taking aim at republicans over proposals that he said would cut entitlement programs. it's an opportunity for him to lay out what's at stake and i think project this notion as he has in the past of steady leadership, lifting the nation out of a pandemic. leading the country's response to the war in ukraine which is entering its second year. so the platform is not lost on this white house. especially as you've seen the president struggle with his approval ratings in recent months. >> and susan, let's talk about the timing of his campaign announcement. i have been told sometime ago that it was likely going to be very early. much earlier than this. earlier than usual for a first term president. now it's not only after the state of the union, but might be pushed back farther. >> yeah, i think there are signs that it's going to be pushed back not in february, maybe not in march, as late as april.

this is what joe biden has done in the past when he's run for president. he has announced on the late side, he's decided on the late side. in this case, i think there's less pressure on him to get out there and announce because there's a working assumption now that he is going to run and that he is unlikely to be seriously challenged for that nomination by other democrats. now that can change with time, but it takes some of the pressure off and in the meantime, he's facing this independent counsel and the documents case. i think that has taken wind out of the sails for an early announcement. i would like to tomorrow night's speech as a signal that he is planning to run. a preview of the campaign themes he will strike even though i think an announcement is further away than we once assumed. >> thanks to all of you. and tonight at 11:00 p.m. eastern, stephanie wu hosts a round table discussion with insiders on the eve of president

biden's state of the union address and tomorrow at 8:00 eastern, rachel, joy, and nicole will have special analysis and we'll have a two-hour show from 11:00 to 1:00. join us for conversation and analysis in advance of the speech. and toxic threat. a train derailment in eastern ohio forces evacuation orders for thousands of residents. what we know about the quality of the air and further threats that could be looming. that's next. urther threats that could be looming. that's next. dove invited en whod their damaged hair trimmed. yes, i need a trim. i just want to be able to cut the damage. we tried dove instead. so, still need that trim? oh my gosh! i am actually shocked i don't need a haircut. don't trim daily damage. stop it with dove. you love closing a deal. but hate managing your business from afar. you need to hire. i need indeed. indeed you do. indeed instant match instantly delivers quality candidates

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ron allen joining us now. this is extraordinary. we've seen these kind of incidents before, but nothing this serious. >> reporter: the situation is not getting any better, andrea, according to what the governor has just said. he said the potential for a catastrophic explosion still exists. there are hazmat and other teams there trying to assess the situation and figure out what best to do. he was talking about potentially some sort of controlled release of some of the chemicals and some of the materials that are hazardous there later this afternoon to try to defuse the situation. he's also said the evacuation zone which is mandatory is going to be expanded from one mile to two miles in some directions from the area. right now we're about a mile and a half from where this happened

over in that direction. yes, there's a briefing going on right behind us. this has become the command center here. the local elementary school, there's no school here today, businesses are shut. you drive around here and it's like a ghost town for many miles in many directions. this is a fairly rural part of the state, so it's not a densely populated area. it's a bit eerie when you drive here and there's no one here. all this started friday night around 9:00 when this train that was some 100 cars long crashed, apparently because of some kind of mechanical issue. we don't know what the exact cause is. the ntsb is here looking at that. about 50 of the 100 train cars detailed. about 20 of those 50, as we understand it, contain some sort of hazardous materials. the train was going from somewhere in illinois near pennsylvania. we're near the pennsylvania/ohio

border. the authorities went door-to-door, and they're going to do that again today to make sure people are away out of an abundance of caution. they're monitoring the air quality now and saying it's not harmful at this point. they're going to continue monitoring that and the groundwater supplies. it's a very volatile situation because they can't just go to the scene and put out the fire because they apparently feel that is too risky for the first responders who will be doing that. they're trying to relieve some of the pressure that's building up in this car or cars where these hazardous materials are that could potentially explode. it's a very delicate operation. again, this has been going on now since friday night some time. as of this morning, the latest word is that the situation is not stable. they're going to increase the evacuation area and try to take some steps throughout the day to ease the tension, ease the pressure and the potential for a

catastrophe. andrea. >> ron allen outside this terrible disaster area in palestine, ohio. thank you, ron. that does it for this edition of "andrea mitchell reports." join us tomorrow in washington starting at 11:00 eastern for a full preview of the president's state of the union address. follow the show online, on facebook and on at which time twitterer. chris jansing will be here after these messages. be here after these messages a preventive tret for episodic migraine. most common side effects are nausea, constipation, and tiredness. ask your doctor about qulipta.

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