Tanker collides with riverboat carrying 129 passengers in New Orleans

We begin tonight with breaking news. More than 100 people aboard the cruise ship you're looking at right now. A riverboat cruise ship was just hit by a tanker in New Orleans. You are looking at live pictures of the scene. The boat, the ship seems to have completely capsized. I'm Sharon Crowley, and we are keeping a very close eye on this situation. Let's get right now to Linda Schmidt. She's live in our newsroom. Linda, the pictures are devastating. What are we learning about what happened? I mean, when you look at that, your jaw just drops looking at that. There are about 129 passengers who were on that riverboat. Some of them were seen floating in the water, and thankfully they were rescued. But take a look at this. You can see it, the riverboat. It's called the American Heritage, now on its side after being struck by a tanker on the Mississippi River. The riverboat then taking on water, and it's all happening near the port of New Orleans. Now, people were in the water wearing life vests, and some of them were rescued. The U.S. Coast Guard, local emergency crews, and the governor of Louisiana are on the scene right now. The rescue operation here is still underway as authorities start. To try and make sure that everybody who was on that boat is accounted for. The riverboat, by the way, was docked when the tanker crashed into it. This happened about 12.30 this afternoon. And authorities are telling us that at least a dozen people so far have been taken to the hospitals. But, I mean, that is just, when we looked up and we saw the visuals of this, Sharon, we couldn't believe it. Somebody said it looks like the Titanic. Yeah. It just. It was hit and then immediately started taking on water and started going on to its side immediately. And then now look at it. Half of it's submerged. So, Linda, what we understand from this, you mentioned it was docked, which hopefully will be some kind of a saving grace because maybe perhaps it wasn't as full as it might normally been if it was underway. And just those pictures are unbelievable. I know they have on these riverboat cruises drills where people are trained to put on their life jackets and run to the right space, and they go through it. But when something happens like this so suddenly, you don't walk around the riverboat wearing your life jacket. Yeah, that's right. But apparently a lot of people were able to get those life jackets on because, like I said, they were seen in the water and they were rescued. And I don't know if you've ever been to New Orleans. I've been there, and I've seen these riverboats. Thank you very much. restaurants on them. Some of them have casinos. So people will go to these river boats and they'll go on them just for dinner. Like it's not even taking a trip down the river, down the Mississippi River. But they'll just stop and they'll have dinner or they'll gamble, you know, just have a good time. And this was docked. So it may have been one of those types of boats. And as you can see, it's five stories. I was counting them. So it's five stories. So it might be one of those boats like that I have experienced when I've been down in New Orleans. But, like I said, they're saying 129 people were on board. And so now they are starting the process because the rescue operation is still underway. And then, of course, right away they want to start seeing who is accounted for. And, Linda, one of the things for sure they'll be looking at is the current, the fast current in the Mississippi River there and the depth of the water for a tanker to get through there. It's got to be pretty deep, the channel, for the tanker to get through there. So that's certainly a concern. You know, we here living on the island of Manhattan here certainly know how fast the currents are in the East River and the Hudson River and how deep it is right in the channel as we see the barges, you know, ship in our area. I hope you'll keep us posted because I'm guessing we're going to hear from emergency officials fairly shortly. That's what we're hoping that we're going to. But, you know, when you're looking at this video here and you see the tanker, I heard a couple of people, because we've been monitoring this now for just about a half an hour, 40 minutes, and I heard some people talking about the fact that the tanker may, as it was going under that bridge, maybe it was trying to turn for some reason, thinking that it wasn't going to be able to make it past the riverboat and maybe turn the wrong way. Or something. Something obviously went wrong. Definitely. Yeah. And at least it's clear weather there and it's daylight because we've seen sometimes when these catastrophes happen, it's pitch dark or the weather is inclement. But it does look like they have every opportunity for other boats and for a rescue operation to be underway. Yeah, the mere fact that it was docked is probably going to be a big saving grace. But the Mississippi River, you may not be able to tell from that, but the current is really strong on the Mississippi River, just like it is, you know, on the Hudson. There are times like when you think, like, you see the surface and it looks very calm. You get, you know, a foot or two below the surface of that water, and that rip current is very, it's very strong. The same applies to the Mississippi. Linda, keep us posted and break in at any time. We'll be following this for you.