time on hbo max. join us here on cnn the week after the super bowl to find out who is talking next. welcome back to the 8:00 hour of the cnn newsroom. i m jim acosta in washington. we begin with more breaking news. some of the first images we have seen of possible debris from that chinese spy balloon downed yesterday off the coast of south carolina. this video was shot by a south carolina resident just coming in this evening. this resident told cnn he saw a navy boat carrying what he believed to be debris from the balloon. cnn cannot independently confirm whether this is indeed debris from that balloon. we are reaching out to the u.s. navy for comment. in the meantime, this comes at the same time we are learning new details about when the pentagon learned about the balloon and when the president was informed about it. more on that in a moment. i want to begin in north myrtle beach, south carolina, and the focus of the recovery efforts. ca carlos, what can you tell us abou
coast of myrtle beach, south carolina, collecting the wreckage of the downed balloon. republicans are condemning president biden for failing to take action on the balloon sooner. let s get the latest on the balloon and today s recovery efforts, zachary cohen is here. zachary, what more are we learning about this balloon and, i guess, at some point, they need to pull it up out of the ocean and start examining it. i think at this early stage, u.s. officials are not buying the chinese government s explanation that it was a civilian aircraft. they have strongly indicated, defense officials and administration officials, strongly told us that this was used for spying and they believe it was used to try to collect data about sensitive u.s. military sites across the country. now, that raises an being question, though, and one that the biden administration is going to have to grapple with in the next few days. they know that was the intent of this balloon, why did they not shoot it
Days. they do not expect this to play out for several weeks or several months. we are told once that process is done, they will go ahead and take that debris from here in south carolina up to virginia. carlos suarez with the latest from myrtle beach. we have more on the recovery efforts. alex, what can you tell us? reporter: the u.s. military is sending a salvage ship up that way. they are trying to get as many pieces of this balloon as its surveillance equipment in hand as they can. this debris field is about seven miles wide. they are encouraged by the fact that it is only about 47 feet deep. that is shallower than they expected. they are trying to gather as much as they can for counterintelligence purposes, to try to understand what the chinese government might have learned to understand the technology that was on this balloon. when president biden gave the order to shoot this balloon down, we understood he had two
On a military vessel where it is going to be analyzed and be taken from south carolina up to virginia. we re told, again, all of this is playing out off the coast of south carolina. they expect to be able to get to it relatively quick, even though we have had some pretty spotty weather out here. officials have told cnn they don t expect this to take anywhere between weeks or even a month. they expect to get to this in the next couple of days. underscoring how much of an effort is under way out here up and down the coast, the debris field is about seven miles long and so they are already telling folks that live out here if you do come across this debris, any of it that may have washed ashore, don t bother taking a photo of it, or take it home with you, leave it alone. it s part of a federal investigation. jim? all those beach combers out there, be careful with that
All flights are sold out going out of charleston. might have to go to a different airport. steve: janice dean joins us with the weather. > janice: would are going to get a new advisory as of 8:00 a.m. hurricane watches in effect for the carolinas. the storm is strength. it s going through what we call an eye wall replacement cycle. that means the outer eye wall takes in for the inner eye wall. all that means is we could potentially have a category 5 later on today. we do anticipate at least a category 4 as it makes land fall across the carolinas. that s the center of the storm where you see that 4. anywhere from the south carolina up to virginia you still need to pay attention. we don t know the exact location where the eye is going to come inland there is the tropical models. as you can see the big problem here is this storm could slow down and dump incredible historic amounts of rainfall. not only along the coast but inland. of course, we have the storm surge, the hurricane force win