along with hurricane earl, we re also covering another important story tonight, from the gulf. in the wake of the bp disaster, another oil rig burst into flames today. around 9:20 am local time, 900 miles off the coast of louisiana. the platform after the fires, vermilion oil rig. it started on one of the seven active wells. the cause of the fire right now, we frankly don t know. initially, there were reports of a sheen on the water measuring 100 feet wide and a mile long. authorities now believe there was no sheen coming from this damaged rig. with the platform in flames, the crew of 13 jumped in the water. they were all rescued, thankfully. company officials said none of the crew members were injured. grateful news to their families and it comes four months after 11 men aboard the deepwater horizon died in the bp oil
just in to cnn, the justice department has filed a lawsuit against sheriff joe arpaio, the sheriff of maricopa county, arizona. we understand that the lawsuit says sheriff arpaio has not cooperated with the probe of his office. the justice department gave arpaio until august 17th, to hand over documents it first asked for 15 months ago. what s the at the crux of this? it seems negotiations have failed to produce an agreement on the government s request on documents to investigate possible discrimination against hispanics, we ll continue to follow developments on this front. breaking news from the gulf of mexico, it will sound all too familiar. an oil rig 90 miles south of the louisiana coastline is burning right now. it exploded last hour. 13 workers were on the rig.
to, does it sound like a natural gas explosion to you? caller: our understanding is it was a natural gas production platform. whether it was natural gas that exploded or whether there could be a fire of some other kind on the rig, i think we just don t know yet. ben castleman is a reporter for the wall street journal. thanks for your time. appreciate it. cnn is your hurricane headquarters and we want to get you the up-to-date information on hurricane earl. reynolds wolf is tracking it for us. give us the latest that you have. it s still a powerhouse there are some good signs, we ll get to those this due course. what we know is it is a category four storm, the strongest one on the planet. winds are up to 140, gusts to 165 miles per hour. a couple of things we re seeing right now look pretty favorable for this thing to actually weaken. one thing we re seeing if you look at the last couple of frames of this, you ll see a little bit of drier air that s trying to invade, getting a
producing any product. so we do not know if there s any additional concerns of pollution, even though it was not producing product. so just sort of to recap here. we ve got an explosion and a fire on this rug, about 90 miles sort of vermilion bay, terr terre bonne bay region? caller: it s in, it s 90 miles south of vermilion bay. all right. and 13 people were on board the rig, everyone has been accounted for at this point? yes, that is correct. and coast guard helicopters and coast guard cutters are en route to rescue these people as soon as possible. and bill, no word yet as to whether or not there is a leak, an oil leak associated with this explosion and fire? caller: that has not been determined. that will be under investigation. i remember being at the hospital thinking,
vessels as well. bill, let me check the numbers. 12 accounted for, were there 13 on the rig? my reporting in front of me says 13 people were on board the rig. caller: yes, there are 13 that were reported to be aboard the rig and all have been accounted for. 12 are in emergent suits and one is injured. okay. caller: and they will be taken to terre bonne general medical center. do we know anything about the circumstances? i know it s very early, of what might have happened here? caller: we don t know what, what caused the rig to catch on fire. but the incident is under investigation. and we are talking about an explosion and fire? caller: yes, there is, the rig, there are reports that the rig is still on fire. and that will be the cause of the incident will be under investigation. and is under investigation as well. since we are talking about an oil rig, i have to ask the