rescue crews on both sides of the border continue the frantic search for survivors. also, tensions rising between the united states and china after the biden administration shot down that chinese spy balloon saturday afternoon and criticism from top republicans for the president s decision not to shoot it down sooner. all this as the president puts the final touches on his state of the union address when he s expected to tout his accomplishments including a better than predicted campaign and a preview of his election campaign. good day. as a tragedy of epic proportions is unfolding in turkey and syria, a massive 7.2 earthquake taking nearly 2,000 lives already and devastating commercial and residential areas of both countries. there are also nearly 10,000 people injured and possibly hundreds more still trapped under the rubble from decimated buildings as the aftershocks rip through the region and hinder rescue efforts. those are live pictures in southern turkey of a rescue
The coast of myrtle beach, South Carolina. Tonight, military crews are jam bling to recover the wreckage, and china is responding angrily. Meanwhile, President Biden says he and u. S. Military leaders decided to wait until the balloon completed its crosscountry journey and was safely overwater before shooting it down. Listen to this. On wednesday when i was briefed on the balloon, i ordered the pentagon to shoot it down on wednesday as soon as possible. Cnn has Team Coverage of this extraordinary moment in u. S. China relations. I want to start with cnns Orin Lieberman over at the palm. Walk us through what happened earlier today. This was days of planning to get to this point, to figure out how best to shoot this balloon down and where best to shoot this balloon down. In the end, the Department Of Defense recommended waiting until it was out overwater and the prevailing winds over the United States, especially over the course of the past day, took it out over the waters of north and S
increased numbers at our southern border. they sent a team down this week to ask about whether or not there were enough teachers there or what the accommodations were for kids? how about the team ask what are we doing to stop it and turn these migrants back and tell them this isn t the way to come to america? dana: i really think we need to focus on the humanitarian condition. is it more humane to say do not come. let us get our systems in place but do not come right now. you will be turned away. don t take the journey. don t undertake it. try to deal with your situation better at home rather than forcing them out on the trail. bill: a lot of policies in the trump years have been turned around in 60 days. surprisingly the white house sent the senior team down to the border over the weekend. spent a few days there and we re told through the white house just yesterday that they hope to meet with president biden sometime this week. that was the phrase that was used yesterday
what can you tell us about how night has fallen, how they re doing in terms of trying to find survivors? reporter: well, as you know, this is an all hands on deck operation as they search quickly as possible to try and find survivors that are trapped under the rubble. what we are seeing here is complete and utter destruction and devastation in both syria and turkey. where we know collectively some 3,000 buildings collapsed. more than 2200, that number continues to rise in terms of that death toll. we know thousands of people are injured. thousands more though rushing to the area to try and help. you just look at these devastating images coming in from turkey, for example, where these buildings are collapsed. people trapped underneath the rubble. families screaming for their loved ones. first responders as we talked about rushing there trying to rescue these people while also asking people to remain silent so they can hear the voices of people screaming for help as these search and re
finally, it s worth pointing out that this will be a multi agency effort. this won t just be the fbi, but it makes sense to me why the fbi would be leading this in their location of there s also, wolf, a public accountability aspect of this. this is obviously a very public events that we ve seen. we ve already heard lawmakers calling for accountability, calling for answers, so you know, we don t often see the cia, nsa, other intelligence agencies out there. this will likely be the fbi, if there is some type of public report to come about. but this certainly makes sense to me that this would be the team where this analysis would be done. good point. terry, this seems like an all hands on deck operation, this investigation that s about to unfold, the fbi, the cia, the defense department, and more that we don t even know about. what does that say to you, what a big deal this is emerging? one of the interesting things about this whole event is that the u.s. and china are countries that