[Music] this is an NBC News special report here's Savannah Guthrie good morning everybody we're coming on a bit early with breaking news a horrifying scene in Baltimore this morning the Francis Scott Key bridge struck by a cargo ship and collapsing overnight you can see the video right there shows the entire structure appearing to break apart this is a mile and a half bridge over Baltimore Harbor NBC's Tom Costello is right there at the scene for us and Tom obviously the concern is anyone who wa
s on the bridge members on the cargo ship what can you tell us what's the latest right now that's right this happened at 1:30 this morning a Singapore flagged vessel a cargo ship Struck One of the support structures one of the pylons if you will holding up the Francis Scott Key bridge and with that the entire Bridge as you saw in that video collapsed into the water just a stunning scene here and this is a critical artery the Francis scottt Key Bridge into and around the Port of Baltimore which a
s you know is one of the nation's busiest ports and so that is going to create a massive logistical headache this morning the Maryland governor has declared a state of emergency the transportation secretary Pete Buddha judge in Char in in contact I should say with the Maryland governor as well fire department and Coast Guard rescue operations have been ongoing since very early searching for any potential victims who may have gone into the water and we have heard there may be seven people who wen
t into the water maybe more nobody on the ship is missing We Believe however the concern is that there may have been construction workers on top of the bridge when the bridge was struck and that they may have gone into the water as a result this is a massive search and rescue operation and it's being described by some at the Maryland State Police as an ongoing mass casualty incident this is right along the critical ey 95 Corridor which of course is is the critical artery up and down the East Coa
st so if you are planning to drive up and down the East Coast through Baltimore be aware that you will see traffic affected the traffic is being told to avoid 695 and go up I95 and 8.95 instead nonetheless uh as you would expect we have major major Emergency Operations now staging at our location uh we are just down the road from this bridge that stretches over over the patas riv River pardon me and it is unlikely of course given the state of that bridge there's going to be any activity of cours
e for some time right now it is all about life saving and rescue operations underway yes so this is the the the ship was called the DOI as you said it Singapore flagged as I understand it it had just departed Baltimore Harbor uh presumably loaded with cargo when you look at the the video closely it appears as the cargo ship it looked looks very dark as it hits that support structure uh you know one can't speculate but it looks very very dark as it hits the support structure what do you make of t
hat well not only that but notice right above it that appears to be smoke uh coming from the ship itself uh all of this is according to eyewitnesses who have also said they thought they saw smoke coming from the ship so that clearly is going to be part of this investigation and I must say all of us who live in the greater Washington Baltimore area and who are very much aware of what a critical Bridge the Francis Scott Key bridge is are are stunned that how a single cargo ship could take this bri
dge out how could they have hit the pylon to begin with and second of all um how is it possible that this bridge was so vulnerable to being taken out by a single cargo vessel agreed regardless as you know this is yeah and it and this is a critical Port the Port of Baltimore handles just tremendous amount of volume shipping volume for the east coast and this morning all of that is very much uh kind of hitting the pause button as this ongoing search and rescue operation continues it's still dark t
here and we're looking at some overhead images there Tom I don't know if you can see we seem to have some new images coming in aerial images uh so we have to wait for the sun to come up to see just how extensive this is this is a mile and a half long bridge as you mentioned it's known it's it's the Key Bridge in the Baltimore Harbor but part of 695 I 695 a heavily trafficked area as you know can you tell whether I mean you see sort of a portion of the bridge appearing to Still Standing leading u
p to you I mean is it fair to say do you have any insight in from your Vantage Point is the entire Bridge collapsed or is this a partial bridge collapse uh you know Savannah I'm going to here's the thing you have as good if not better view than I do because I'm about a mile down the road and we can't of course go over that road because it goes right into the bridge but these aerial shots that we're looking at really provide us the best perspective and to me this looks like for all intent and pur
poses a total bridge collapse there maybe just a tiny piece of it is still standing but uh this is just an unbelievable uh series of events that has brought have brought this this bridge down here in Baltimore well there's uh as you said up to 20 people potentially still missing the shipping company says that all of its cargo Shi employees are accounted for that is good news there are uh reports of construction workers who were on the bridge at the time and who may be missing in the water and ta
lk about conditions there you're standing it is right there it is very very cold we understand the water there the Patapsco River to be about 48 degrees fahit uh which of course brings up concerns of hypothermia very very quickly well and this happened at 1:30 in the morning so if uh if anybody had gone into that water you'd be very concerned about survivability at this point it's about 35° out here out on the land uh and we have a bit of a wind blowing here some of some family members I'm told
some family members of construction workers have been gathered at a nearby gas station just down the road looking for waiting for any word at all about whether their loved ones were safe but we don't have any word on that at this point we are awaiting a press conference we expect momentarily from Maryland state authorities uh State Police we believe and hoping for more information and you're right the numbers of potential victims has kind of been very very uh up just all over the map we've heard
seven we've heard up to 20 the problem is we don't know how many cars or individuals may have been on the bridge at 1:30 in the morning and gone into the water so yes there are an awful lot of unanswered questions here but just a just an unbelievable series of events with that bridge crumbling and not only that for us to have video of the moment of impact uh is really striking as I mentioned the NTSB will be leading the investigation but we are still very much in the emergency rescue stage and
I want to just mention we showed a few moments ago a makeship Podium being set up there it is uh officials are expected to be briefing media in just a few moments and we will continue to be here live and we will carry that live as we hope to get a little more information as you said there's much more that is not known at this hour Tom then is known um and but important to note that authorities have immediately referred to this as a mass casualty event so a tragedy and a shocking one at that and
and to just go back to this bridge and the history of the bridge it's nearly 50 years old it opened in 1977 um the other ways through this particular area which if you look at a map it's the Waterway very complex Waterway one of the biggest ports in the United States and the bridge is uh what that the bridge was opened as an alternative to the tunnels in that area it has had some Renovations somewhat recently in the 80s but Tom I'm struck as you were and other Witnesses are that one cargo ship g
ranted hitting a pylon a major support structure could bring down a a bridge that's a mile and a half long yeah that's right and I think one of the key questions for investigators will be who was piloting the ship uh as you know when you come into very busy ports and harbors in this country very often the captain of the ship has to essentially hand control of the bridge over to a local pilot who gets on the ship to navigate into the waters to navigate into the harbor itself so we don't know if i
t was the captain who was responsible for the ship at that very moment or did they have a local Harbor Master if you will or a pilot I should say who was on board at the time we simply don't know and pardon me for not having all the all the the proper language on this I am not a harbor expert and I'm sure we've got them on our in our audience people who are very familiar with this but this is a very very complicated port with a tremendous amount of shipping volume carries just a tremendous amoun
t of cargo into and out of the East Coast uh and I will tell you that if you travel in and around the Baltimore area you know how often you see massive container ships here cruise ships are here there are an awful lot of of car lots where brand new cars are staging before they are loaded onto or coming off of these ships just a tremendous amount of activity in this area so to lose the Francis Scott Key bridge and then to also have this Harbor or this port so dramatically impacted will have a dra
matic impact on the Baltimore region today certainly economic but also of course just logistically and getting around but at the moment our our key concern is is how many people may have been on the bridge and may be in the water yes including potentially at several Construction workers who may have been working at the time look at this aerial shot here Tom and it's hard to make out frankly it's dark it's unclear what we're looking at there because there were conflicting reports about whether or
not the cargo ship itself had sunk yeah i' I've heard that it may have sunk uh Savannah I don't have that myself I don't have that information confirmed it's one of the reasons we're hoping to get more clarity uh from Maryland state authorities uh with this news conference any moment now I think we want to know whether in fact that ship did sink we want to know how many people may be still in the water how many people may have been on the bridge how many are they looking for the extent of the s
earch and rescue offers we know operations rather we know that Baltimore City Fire and Rescue has been here also surrounding fire departments responded the Coast Guard responded as well but we're waiting for the specifics of that and and I we're going to hear from officials may get some of those answers as they step here to the microphones in in Baltimore uh on this breaking news this morning the the collapse of the Key Bridge in Baltimore Harbor let's listen everybody good everybody ready okay
good morning my name is Chief James Wallace I'm the chief of the Baltimore City Fire Department I'm joined this morning by our mayor Brandon Scott council president Mosby councilwoman Porter County Executive Johnny oesi and Baltimore County fire chief Joanne rund um our brief this morning there'll be an update on the search and rescue operation that's ongoing at this point so at approximately 0140 hours this morning our 911 Center dispatched a call to the Baltimore City Fire Department for a rep
ort of a water rescue um in the bapsa river in the area of the Key Bridge as units were responding they began to receive numerous calls indicating multiple people in the water at some point during that that chain of events of calls um we began to receive indications that a uh a ship may have struck the Key Bridge we got further information through multiple calls that the Key Bridge um portions of the Key Bridge had actually collapsed at about 0150 hours our first unit arrived on scene and report
ed um a complete collapse of the Key Bridge um we were also given information at that time that there were likely multiple people on the bridge at the time of the collapse and that as a result multiple people were in the water we were able to remove uh two people from the water one individual refused service and refused transport essentially that person was not injured however there was another individual that's been transported to a local trauma center that is in very serious condition at this
time we have multiple air assets from the Maryland State Police as well as the Baltimore Police Department as well as multiple Marine assets from around the region including Baltimore City anondo County Baltimore County as well as multiple local and State Police uh agencies uh national resources police um BPD special option unit is in here Maryland State Police is here we have multiple resources we are still very much in an active search and rescue skue posture at this point and we will continue
to be for some time we have a large area that we have to search this includes on the surface of the water subsurface as well as on the deck of the ship itself we believe at this point we may be looking for we may be looking for upwards of seven individuals that's the latest information we have however what I will say is is the information that I'm giving you right now is as of right now that's what we know right now um this is a very large incident it involves a very large footprint multiple ag
encies are operating therefore information is subject to change as we get more Intel um and as our crews work through the morning um over the next 8 to 12 hours you can expect to continue to see um our and Maritime assets functioning um out on the water and in the air above um we need to do damage assessment of of the ship itself before we can board that ship um and we need to continue our subsurface search which is including um different types of sonar we have sidescan sonar we have other sonar
capabilities here we have underwater um uavs that we're working with and throughout the night we've also been working with uh infrared technology both from the air and on the water surface so um I'm going to wrap up here with just saying this continues to be a search and rescue operation it continues to be a very Dynamic operation with multiple local state and federal resources involved um with that I'm going to turn it over to our mayor mayor Brandon Scott uh thank you thank you Chief uh every
one this is a Unthinkable a tragedy uh we have to uh first and foremost pray pray for all of those who are impacted uh those families I pray for our first respondents and thank them uh all of them working together uh city state local to make sure that we are working through this uh tragedy uh this is an ongoing actic uh research uh that we're having right now we're going to continue as you heard from Chief Wallace to throughout as long as we have to be doing that we will do it but we have to be
thinking about the families and people impacted uh folks who uh we have to try to find in safe this is what our focus should be on right now and we're going to continue to work in partnership with every part of government to do everything that we can uh to get us through the other side of this tragedy and with that I'll turn it over to County Executive oesa thank you Mayor Scott um I think we all awoke this morning to an unspeakable tragedy as the mayor indicated we know that there will be famil
ies and individuals impacted by this regardless of what happens the rest of the way out uh so I would just Echo the mayor in lifting up prayers for those who are impacted but also ask that our residents pay pray for our First Responders um you know they have been on scene since very early in the morning um not only conducting initial search and rescue operations but planning for additional ones as the sun comes up and um you know the work that they do cannot be understated and we I want to just
thank them for all that they are doing and and will do in the hours and days ahead uh we know that we have a long road ahead not just in the search and rescue but in the Fallout following this uh I think we appropriately have our attention on the search and rescue efforts currently uh and just here alongside uh our partners in the city to say that they have our full support just as we want to thank um our state partners for the resources they've offered up as well as the federal Partners who hav
e already reached out uh the mar I've talked to the governor we we've heard from the secretary Transportation uh so collectively we thank everyone for uh their thoughts their well wishes uh but again this is a very active situation and we want to just thank uh the chief and our teams for all the great work they're doing and with that I'll turn things back over to Chief thank you County weski uh do some Q&A right now we're just going to go around have everyone present question Chief can you tell
us where the crew of the ship is um you also mentioned too that two people were rescued who made the first 911 call and there were reports that it was a crew on the deck of the ship working at that point can you confirm any of that information the latest information we have on the on the crew of the ship is that they are still on board the ship um there's been CS between the ship crew and the Coast Guard so as as part of the overall operation we communicate through the Coast Guard with the ship
and and I'm sorry are your other questions there were two people taken who made the first 911 call I don't know who's who made that call yet okay and there were were there other workers on the the deck of the ship at this or deck of the bridge at this point we had heard that information can you confirm that we were being told there were workers on the bridge we have yet to confirm that um we'll work with mdta to to you know obviously to get that information about how many cars were on that ship
last question on the uh on the deck of the bridge at the time of CSE you know don't have a number I can tell you our sonar has detected the presence of vehicles submerged in the water I don't have count of that yet um Chief you mentioned upwards of seven individuals that you're looking for we've heard reports of as many as 20 individuals can you just paint and more clear picture of about how many people actually fell into the water how many people you might be looking to rescue and also if you c
an give an idea of how many vehicles although might not have the answer but really just c yeah I'll start with the last one so I don't know how many vehicles yet yet I know that we have detected the presence of vehicles as far as the number between the 7 and 20 that's been a dynamic count um throughout the morning just given the fact that we haven't yet nailed that number down we do believe that at least seven are involved in that at least seven at this point that fell into water yes ma'am yeah
and I know you said the crew was accounted for for postard on Deck do we know if any of the crew were part of these at least seven people that may have been in the water we do not suril around not very sh Focus to so we'll be guided by by our dive teams we will determine what the temperature of the water is the other issue that we have out there is this water is is is current uh influenced so right now we think the ti is coming back in that adds a bit of a challenge to us also we can certainly d
ive in these conditions but we have to take a lot of factors into play right the fact that there may be trauma involved they have been in in the water an extended period of time um but also remember we're battling Darkness so you know it's it's quite possible that we may have somebody there that we've not seen yet um and as they work closer to the debris field um you know they'll they'll obviously make those determinations but we're going to rely on the experts which are our our our dive Masters
that are here our dive team to tell us when they believe we've reached that that that non-s survivability Point yes sir J Chief was there any indication that there was a problem on the ship was [Music] it we we do not have that information with regard to the investigation I would refer that to to law enforcement my my focus since 1:40 this morning has been that rescue operation so so far there's been no indication any kind of like emergency dispatch came from that ship I have no information abo
ut that man have you been able to talk to the pilot the American pilot on on that bridge the the the pilot on the vessel yeah we have not talked to the pilot on the vessel the rescue Personnel the rescue operation we have not interacted back over here us I don't have agent I'm sorry yeah I don't I don't have age and gender on either one patient refused service right really they weren't injured the second patient however was seriously injured and is at an area Trauma Center are you including them
in the seven at least seven people we don't know yet if they're part of that seven that the the the patient is injured severely enough that we've not been able to debrief that patient that seven number come from people witnessing where did that number or is that just from the sonar hits you got no that was the initial information that we got as we were arriving on the scene that number and that number again as I said earlier has fluctuated right that that seven has been a consistent number how
many ages oh wow does um it dozens I mean locally you know fire department wise Baltimore County's here Howard County's here Harford uh was here PG was here um Anna rondle um of course Baltimore city and a lot of those agencies are here by virtue of the fact that they may have specialized equipment that we need during an incident like this so um we're we're bringing in the equipment specific to the operation right now and then even even enforcement agencies have a lot of the same Marine Ops equi
pment as we do so given the incident is so big we try to force multiply and just bring as many resources in as we can so that we can really blanket a large area for a search what about the we don't we've not been able to confirm that we actually have an active fuel spill from The Vessel um we've had odors of diesel fuel the Maryland Department the environment is here um as well as the Coast Guard so they would take leads on that as well we hope as the sun comes up a little bit with the air asset
s that are up to get a much better picture if we do have a fuel spill what the impact has been so far yeah Maryland State Police has been here um foxtrot is also working this there there are two air resources right now um I don't know that we won't bring any more in but right now they're the two primary um you know air reconnaissance on something on the open water is just it's an invaluable resource and we've been very fortunate to have it because as we put people out in the dark on the water to
conduct searches they have that degree of OverWatch from those assets so it's it's been an invaluable resource for us Mr Mayor M Mr executive we're talking about search and rescue I know that and that's where the focus is right now I was awakened with this news we're all awakened with this news I've seen the video what what what do you make of the to ality of this incident what what are you thinking about what you've seen and what this community's experienced now well this is a tragedy that you
can never imagine right and uh I was awake when Chief wallers called me but never would you think that you would see physically see the Key Bridge tumbled down like that it looked like something out of a an action movie and you just think about most importantly which is what we all should be thinking about right now nothing but those families and people that are impacted and those people who are risking their Liv lives right now from not just Baltimore city and Baltimore County but all over the
state to try to save lives that should be our Focus the preservation of life because no one wants to see that happen L alone someone in their family someone that they know uh uh be injured in an incident like this mayor Brandon Scott other officials James wall is the fire chief of Baltimore city with the breaking news this morning it is on your screen the Francis Scott Key bridge in Baltimore Harbor in the water this morning patasco River and we've learned quite a bit from that news conference
I want to bring in Tom Costello our correspondent who's at the scene most importantly that at least seven people are still unaccounted for this morning and right now Marine units looking for survivors in The Frigid Waters there and the Patapsco River the cruise ship is in Your Vision right there it is still afloat and we're told by officials there that the crew remains on board that ship but you can see what happened at 1:30 this morning and I believe we have the video of it as well if you're ju
st joining us now 6:40 on the East Coast a cargo ship leaving Baltimore Harbor the do owned by Synergy Marine Group and carrying Maris carago hits a support structure of the Key Bridge in Baltimore and there are reports this morning according to officials that the entire Bridge has collapsed as the sun is coming up on the East Coast we are starting to get a better view an aerial view there were cars on the bridge at the time the officials say that sonar has detected the presence of cars in the r
iver two people were pulled from the river this morning one was uninjured the other is said to have very serious injuries and this is a search and rescue mission right now Tom Costello is with me at the Patapsco River about 48 degree water temperature to say that time is of the essence this happened at 130 1:40 this morning about 5 hours ago Rescuers have their work cut out for them as they search for survivors here Absolutely I'll just tell you standing on the ground here near the bridge it is
very cold out here we're about 35° with the wind blowing uh it's about 45° or so in the water we checked with the University of Minnesota duth on how long somebody might be able to survive if they were in the water and uh within 7 Minutes somebody might face just extreme exhaustion and then potentially e even if they have protective clothing and a float uh gear of some sort best case scenario usually you have an hour and so we're very concerned right now about the seven people who are missing an
d whether uh at this point in being in the water with that kind of exposure uh might prove life-threatening uh a couple of other headlines out of that this has been a massive response from Baltimore and all of the surrounding counties sending their own fire rescue and Marine Personnel we've got helic opter in the air above us you heard the fire chief talking about using those air assets to search the water that's very much what we have been hearing right right overhead I should say as they searc
h for any signs of survivors in the water and the other headline is you know we didn't know Savannah going into this conversation you and I didn't know how many people were missing we had heard as many as 20 we now know 7 and separately we didn't know if the ship had sunk because it's so dark we couldn't see now we know in fact the ship is there uh the crew members survived nobody injured on the on the deck of the ship itself and we're told that the uh rescue teams don't want to board that ship
until they've done a full damage assessment and they know whether it's safe so there's an awful lot that goes into this right now absolutely these uh very frigid Waters of the of the Patapsco River outside Baltimore right now the focus of an intense hunt for any survivors of this extraordinary event this cargo ship hitting a support structure of the keybridge in Baltimore and appearing to take it down perhaps entirely we will continue to watch this story you'll have full coverage on NBC News Now
on nbcnews.com and of course coming up in just a few moments on today for now we return you to your local programming I'm Savannah Guthrie in New York this has been an NBC News special report thanks for watching stay updated about breaking news and top stories on the NBC News app or follow us on social media
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