Baltimore bridge collapse ‘unthinkable tragedy’, says city’s mayor I BBC News

Let's go straight to Baltimore now and have a listen into that news conference that's starting right now. 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 Oshefsky, and Baltimore County Fire Chief Joanne Rund. Our brief this morning will 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 report of a water rescue in the Patapsco 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 chain of events of calls, we began to receive indications that a ship may have struck the Key Bridge. We got further information through multiple calls that the Key Bridge, portions of the Key Bridge had actually collapsed. At about 0150 hours, our first unit arrived on scene and reported a complete collapse of the Key Bridge. 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 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, Anne Arundel County, Baltimore County, as well as multiple local and state police agencies, National Resources Police, BPD Special Ops units in here, Maryland State Police is here, we have multiple resources. We are still very much in an active search and rescue 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 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. This is a very large incident, it involves a very large footprint. Multiple agencies are operating, therefore information is subject to change as we get more intel, and as our crews work through the morning. Over the next eight to twelve hours, you can expect to continue to see our air and maritime assets functioning out on the water and in the air above. We need to do damage assessment of the ship itself before we can board that ship, and we need to continue our subsurface search, which is including different types of sonar. We have side-scan sonar, we have other sonar capabilities here. We have underwater UAVs that we're working with, and throughout the night, we've also been working with infrared technology, both from the air and on the water surface. So 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. With that, I'm going to turn it over to our Mayor, Mayor Brandon Scott. Thank you, thank you Chief. Everyone, this is an unthinkable tragedy. We have to first and foremost pray for all of those who are impacted, those families. We have to pray for our first responders and thank them, all of them, working together, city, state, local, to make sure that we are working through this tragedy. This is an ongoing, active research that we're having right now. We're going to continue, as you heard from Chief Wallace, 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, folks who we have to try to find and save. 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 to get us through the other side of this tragedy. And with that, I'll turn it over to County Executive Olszewski. Thank you Mayor Scott. I think we all awoke this morning to an unspeakable tragedy. As the Mayor indicated, we know that there will be families and individuals impacted by this, regardless of what happens the rest of the way out. So I would just echo the Mayor in lifting up prayers for those who are impacted, but also ask that our residents pray for our first responders. They have been on scene since very early in the morning, not only conducting initial search and rescue operations, but planning for the additional ones as the sun comes up. The work that they do cannot be understated. I want to just thank them for all that they are doing and will do in the hours and days ahead. We know that we have a long road ahead, not just in the search and rescue, but in the fallout following this. I think we appropriately have our attention on the search and rescue efforts currently, and just here alongside our partners in the city to say that they have our full support. Just as we want to thank our state partners for the resources they've offered up, as well as the federal partners who have already reached out. The Mayor and I have talked to the Governor, we've heard from the Secretary of Transportation. So collectively we thank everyone for their thoughts, their well wishes, but again, this is a very active situation and we want to just thank the Chief and our teams for all the great work they're doing. With that, I'll turn things back over to you.