know, real vivid form. we have a live picture of it for the first time. you see those guys up there on the top of it? they have been working here for more than a week, 25 to 30 people working 24/7 to get this thing constructed. this is about 40 feet high, it s about 15 feet wide. and it s supposed to go down into the ocean, into the bottom of the ocean, where it will lock on to the leaking pipe and straddle it, and it will also dig about 15 feet below the floor of the ocean to kind of latch on to the ocean floor. the idea being that this will essentially capture the oil as it comes out of the well head, and funnel it on a riser, on a pipe, that will take it to a tank leadership and get it out of there. th believe with this device, they can contain up to 85% of the outflow of that oil. this is going to be finished here in the yard within about 48 hours, they say. they hope they can get it finished by then. then they ve got to do quality control checks, and then they believe by the end o
this will be a tragedy of wildlife and fishery that could take years to come back from once we have figured out how to get this oil off if soggy gulf coast of louisiana. this is not a rock-based formation. this will absorb and kill the grasses protecting the coastline. we learned after the spill of valdez, the oil can stick around a long time. has the developing story. we ll stay with it. thanks so much for joining us. it is already the second worst oil spill in american history. you probably know that by now. what we ve been seeing is bad enough but now a secret government memo points an even grimmer picture. the document got out and the race to prevent a worse case scenario. hey, the mobile press register has published a leaked memo from officials that is quite alarming. it says in a worse case scenario, the leaking pipe could
race to prevent a worse case scenario. hey, the mobile press register has published a leaked memo from officials that is quite alarming. it says in a worse case scenario, the leaking pipe could rupture and fail entirely causing an underwater gusher of oil releasing millions of gallons a day. worst case scenario but they are writing about it and talking about it. that s why the race to seal the leak in here is so critical right now. so urgent. let s look at the enormous challenges being faced in this as we put it out of the way. first, location. let s travel south from up here on the relatively shallow waters of the continental shelf until the seabed plunges down to where this leak is. it is pitch black even at high noon here. there is no way you ll see anything. and i can bring out some video here taken some years ago. not terribly long ago. a little further on the texas coast. you get an idea even down to
grasses protecting the coastline. we learned after the spill of valdez, the oil can stick around a long time. this is a developing story. we ll stay with it. thanks so much for joining us. it is already the second worst oil spill in american history. you probably know that by now. what we ve been seeing is bad enough but now a secret government memo points an even grimmer picture. the document got out and the race to prevent a worse case scenario. hey, the mobile press register has published a leaked memo from officials that is quite alarming. it says in a worse case scenario, the leaking pipe could rupture and fail entirely causing an underwater gusher of oil releasing millions of
million a day operation to attack a swath of oil bigger than the state of delaware and creeping closer to the louisiana shoreline. 1700 people deployed and 70 vessels, including remote-operated submarines that haven t been able to seal off the leaking pipe. now an effort to burn off oil on the surface. tell us about this burning operation. how is that going right now and what do you plan on doing with it? the burning operation is part of a three-pronged attack on the surface. in the core of the spill where the oil thickness is about .1 of a millimeter, we are trying to collect it and see if we can set fire to it. also in that central area, we have 16 large skimming vessels deployed. in the broader area where the spill is a surface sheen, 97% of