Tanker collides with river cruise in New Orleans

Back to the 3 p.m. streaming hour as we continue to follow breaking news out of New Orleans, getting some extraordinary pictures into the Fox 5 Atlanta newsroom, and take a look. At this, if you've ever been to New Orleans, you've no doubt seen this big paddle boat sitting off the dock there taking tourists around the harbor. Well, a big tanker collided with that, what officials are calling a cruise liner, because people get on there for dinner cruises and what have you. But as one of those big paddles in the back of it, apparently some way, somehow these two vessels collided. And there's the tanker in the lower right. People, we understand, according to the mayor's office, in the water with life vests on. Now, someone who's very familiar with the area is our own Ariel Anstott, who you just saw on the 2 p.m. streaming hour. She's helping me on the technical side here at 3 o'clock. Ariel, you're from New Orleans. I mean, give us sort of a lay of the land here where this dock is concerned and what this paddle boat is like. Tom, this is right on the area of the. The riverfront in New Orleans, and this is a really popular cruise. You can go on and listen to the music. You'll also hear it playing if you're walking throughout the French Quarter. It's not far from Canal Street, and it's really surprising to see this kind of a collision, because if you're in a hotel or out along the riverfront, you'll see a lot of different tankers driving by, but never so close. And the fact that this boat, river cruise boat, was parked up against the dock when this collision happened is truly remarkable because I haven't seen tankers come that close to that area. The dock or the port of New Orleans is a lot farther from this more residential area. And I'm assuming that, you know, these paddle boats do all kinds of cruises, both day and night, dinner cruises, lunch cruises, just what kind of, are you familiar with this? Vessel here. Have you ever known anybody to have been on it? Yeah, I've actually been on it quite a long time ago when I was in high school. I'm not sure. I'm trying to see. The back of this boat likely has a big steam wheel that powers it. There's one called the Steamboat Natchez that's very popular and docked along the... Dock there in New Orleans. And there's a second one that's a little smaller. Can't tell if this is the steamboat Natchez, but if it is, it's a really popular boat for dinner cruises, tours around New Orleans. You can get on and just hang out. And sometimes it will go out and leave the dock. But it's just remarkable to see it on its complete side like this. When you hear of a collision, you're not really sure what exactly happened. And then to see it. Completely rotated is just incredible remarkable and you can see the damage. I don't know if you can see on the sort of the rear portion of the ship in the midsection. Maybe we're crushed up against the dock. You wonder, Ariel, as we sort of Try to examine exactly the events that led up to the accident. What happened here? I mean, it's a beautiful day in New Orleans. There's no chop on that river at all. Nothing that would blow that tanker into the side of that vessel. Just the sequence of events that happened here. And I guess as investigators continue to find out exactly what happened, we're just grateful. At least at this point, there are no reports of any deaths. Just people who had to jump overboard and reports of people in the water in their life vests that had to be plucked out and treated there either at the scene or at a local hospital. So this coming to us from New Orleans, WVUE providing these pictures for us. It's something that will be on top of all day here as we continue to follow the breaking news out of New Orleans.