who can help fill in some of the information for us here. captain jim staples, who has been a merchant marine, ship captain for 20 years and personally sailed those same waters off south korea and retired coast guard thad allen is with us as well. you heard that ferry captain say he is at a loss for words. we heard this captain ordered people to stay put once the boat got into trouble. was that the right call? obviously we know now it definitely wasn t. when the captain realized initially he had a great loss of stability on that vessel and there was no way to right the vessel, he should have commanded everybody to get to an evacuation spot immediately to get to life rafts and evacuate that vessel. the time loss having these people stay inside the vessel was precious time that could have been gained if he told people to immediately evacuate. the situation was dire from the beginning. it sounds like he had a stability problem.
you. that s about 79 feet in the entire state of west virginia. west virginia is about the same size as a search zone. so you get a sense of the challenge here. looking for something that is about the length of a tennis court by air in rolling waves in area the size of west virginia. t.j., back to you. tom, who s been on this, thank you so much. we ll check back in. turning to former admiral allen. sir, thank you for being here. we hear how large the search area, even narrowed down. give us an idea here, sir, just how i guess, improbable is it even if you know the search area now and it is a little smaller, still how impossible is it that they find anything? well, t.j., under international search and rescue doctrine, there are key terms to be familiar with. one is datum.
there? it s not credible to me that somebody at the white house didn t know what was going on and things were not going according to plan. i suspect the president even knew. nevertheless, yes, i think it s time for strong new leadership to come in and be leadership that works with other people. president bush, even with katrina, worked very well with a lot of democrats and republicans to try to mitigate the problems. he brought in people like admiral allen and general honoree and don paul to help make things better in louisiana and worked with a lot of democrats from louisiana and new orleans in particular. and president obama should learn from that. you would think. andy card, thank you very much. thank you, steve. e-mail us right now. do you think it s time for fresh blood in the obama white house? e-mail us or facebook us or twitter us. meanwhile, girl power, new numbers about how many women are in the work force. we re going back stage with the hottest act in country music
morning. i m t.j. holmes. we are standing by for one of a number of events that will take place this weekend to remember the victims of 9/11. this is in washington, d.c. where we re expecting to see president george w. bush come out and lay a wreath at the pentagon. he will do this there at a stone. it s essentially the impact point where that plane hit the pentagon ten years ago tomorrow. the president not expected to make remarks, not expected an audience there for it. but we will bring it to you as it happens. we re keeping an eye on what is happening in new york city. take a look this morning. a close shot of one of two of the twin reflecting pools. these huge pools are now sitting where the twin towers once stood. the footprints of the towers. this is the memorial, 9/11 memorial, the official memorial will open on monday to the public, but it will be dedicated tomorrow on the ten-year anniversary of the september 11th attacks. as the nation gets ready to pause and reme
coast guard commandant here in the studio. thad allen, welcome. let s start with the spill cam, it was always up there 24/7, pulsating. did those images accomplish anything? first of all, i thought it created transparency on the response. early on there were issues whether or not bp was releasing the video. we had a long conversation. we knew it was inevitable this stuff had to be seen by the public. we made it the policy we would be releasing it. also that video was the only information we had what was going on down at the flow and was used to analyze the flow rate. this is a story that was very much driven by pictures. you were briefing virtually every day at the white house, in the gulf. what s the administration doing, is the president mad, is the president outraged, but a lot of the cleanup was led by bp. that s correct. under our current rlaws, the responsibility party is supposed