that san francisco general has most of the people is because they are the area s premier trauma center. actually the only one. so everyone who was critical was brought there. that would explain that. okay. melissa keeping an eye on the injured for us. thank you so much. brian piper is standing by now as well. brian, i understand that you actually saw the plane go down? or did you see the aftermath? which one? well, i was in my hotel room across the water here staying at marriott. i have a half a mile view of the runway. and i heard a boom. and that is when i turned around and looked out the window and i saw the plane tumbling and when i say tumbling the nose was down in the dirt. the tail was up in the air and the plane was kind of doing an acrobatic twist. and that is when i saw the plane come to a rest and land. there was a lot of dirt in the air. and i thought it landed on the
cabin. middle portion of the screen there. flames in the cabin. thick smoke billowing from the top of that boeing 777. we heard are from a news conference we heard in the news conference rather that wrapped up just a short time ago that right now the investigation into precisely how it was that this happened, that investigation has started. we have seen a number of uniformed officers on the ground. about 30 or so at one point combing the runway. combing the grassy areas on both sides of the runway looking for clues at one point. in fact, just a short time ago you also saw you a boat in the water there presumably looking for any additional clues as well. we do at this point based on eyewitness accounts, based on the experts we had in the studio and talked to around the country and also just empirical evidence we have seen the tail on the runway so we do know at some point that massive
san francisco 5452. vizquelual. 5452 san francisco entire runway. right clear lane. 5452. 737 500 feet, please. over. sky link 6389 from 183000. i have an emergency. vehicles are responding. emergency. okay. 737. remain clear. contact san carlos tower. contacting san carlos tower. helicopter three is here
to get off the plane. orderly? were they walking orderly? were they running? could you tell? yeah, i could tell. that is the surprising thing. the people were walking orderly. and when i say they were walking and i was really shocked. i was like why are those people walking away from the plane. i was like well, they are probably in shock but it seemed like there was a line of people stretched out walking down the runway but i was like i wonder how many people that is. seemed to be like a hundred people. could be more but it just didn t seem like a capacity plane which i had just come in on. i haded come in on a 747. i was like there has got to be hundreds of people in there. again, the smoke that you saw nothing like the smoke that i m sure you have seen on tv since. nothing like the smoke that we have been showing the viewers. it didn t look that bad after the plane rested is that what you are saying? no, i m saying they got the fire out within five minutes the early responders
give us a sense of kind of the sort of the area where this airport is located in the san francisco bay? so sfo, san francisco international airport is not actually in the city of san francisco. it is located in san mateo county just south of san francisco city limits. if you have ever flown in here, when you fly in, you have this sense that you might be handing on landing on the water when you fly in. it is because those runways kind of jut out from the land and into the water. we were watching as just as we were beginning to take off and land after the airport had been closed for hours and it looked like the first plane coming in was going to land on the water because from the vantage point where i m at you couldn t see there was a runway right there. so, the runways come out into the water. there are four of them. there are only two runways operating right now and that is because of the plane crash.