knowledge about the numbers. i do that because everybody gets nervous if i make a comment, somehow i knew the number. there s an oil production platform in the gulf that s on fire. does it present any of the same problems of the bp rig? it s, obviously, not under a moratorium. do you know anything more about the accident? well, let me just say here s what i know before we came out here. this is, i m told this is a production platform about 100 miles off the coast. i am told the depth of water is about 340 feet. so this is not a, this is not a deepwater facility. as i understand it, the well was not in active production. i will in some ways reiterate what i think the coast guard has said in a statement that they ve released, and that is that they ve responded to the preliminary reports of a fire
you can see that. we do not know if anyone is hurt. if they got away. the plane has just gone down. that s all i know. when we get the new information on this, context and perspective and facts we will bring it to you but i want to show you what happened although the signal is not too great from kgo. wait, one more thing no, no update. more breaking news and pictures of the rig explosion that happened in the gulf. brand new. happened today. and now to the newsroom. i have not seen video yet. reporter: we have still pictures in if we can look at them. they clearly show there was an explosion on that production platform. there was a fire. and as we reported earlier, the coast guard told us about 30 minutes ago that the fire in their words was contained but still burning. you can see that clearly.
this is a producing rig, a drilling rig or a production platform. and there is a difference. it is the vermilion oil rig 380, owned by mariner energy. and the explosion happening about an hour ago, about 90 miles south of vermilion bay, in the terre bonne bay region. 13 workers on board the rig, all of them hit the water, all now accounted for. one with injuries, and we don t know the extent of the injuries. there was an explosion, there is is a fire ongoing, we understand. we will continue to try to gather additional information on this and update the story. if you need a home, listen up for a second here. habitat for humanity of indianapolis needs some first-time home-buyers. they say they won t be able to build any new homes next year unless they have qualified families for them. daniel miller with our cnn affiliate, wish has the story. reporter: in the 1000 block of east ninth street and indianapolis, volunteers are busy working to finish this new
rig. but it s also a production platform. can you help us sort out at least what this particular operation, this platform was functioning as at the time of this explosion and fire? caller: yeah, we re still getting details on that. from what we understand right now, it is a so-called fixed-platform, that means it doesn t move around. it s anchored to the sea floor in just about 300 feet of water and it primarily is a production platform. so, so oil and gas and it seems in this case, probably mostly gas comes into the platform. as far as we understand, there are not people on it on a day-to-day basis. they just come on when there s a job that needs doing. what we don t know is what kind of operation might be going on on board that rig in this particular case. does it sound like, we had a professor on from texas a&m earlier in the hour. his speculation was, it sounded like a natural gas explosion. if you had to speculate at this time, and i know you don t want
there, and mariner says that the fire was reported to the coast guard on a rig 10:20 eastern time, and it burned for several hours. there were earlier reports of a sheen in the water, but a short time ago, the coast guard clarified all of that. the fire is out. coast guard helicopters on scene and vessels on scene have no reports of a visible sheen in the water there. is no report of an evidence of leaks, but we continue to investigate and monitor the situation to make sure it does not change. all of us will be waiting to make sure it does not change as well, because we have nightmares about the earlier spill off of the deepwater horizon. and mariner energy says that the automated equipment safely shut off the valves to the oil and gas when the fire occurred. this is important to note, it is a oil and gas production platform and not a drilling rig.