2010-06-13 CNN
This is bigger than the Super Bowl. This is actually bigger than the Olympics. This is really a big deal for Africa, but it’s also a big deal for the United States. Because you know they really have something to prove. Much of the world sees them really as rookies in football but they are expected. They are playing England who actually invented football tomorrow.
The amount that's been coming out might be a lot, lot more than we ever knew. Let's go to the pictures under water. The latest numbers that we have, as Ali says, about twice as high as a previous estimate. They're now saying 40,000 barrels a day, or 1.7 million gallons a day, might be escaping and might have been escaping for weeks.
I think we're still dealing with the flow estimate and we're still trying to refine those numbers. One portion of the work, as we've just indicated, came up with a higher flow rate. As it stands right now, the actual production capability at optimum for the Discovery Enterprise and the Q4000, if they're operating at maximum efficiency, is 18,000 and 10,000, respectfully, so that's 28,000.
At about 5:30 last evening, the Little Missouri River, which is along this campground, was at about three and a half feet. And within 12 hours, by 5:00 or 5:30 this morning, it was at 20 feet. So it was a very rapid flash flood that inundated that area. The Red Cross that there may have been as many as 300 people there. Obviously they're in the process of trying to determine if there's other people missing and they're in heavy search and rescue mode now with National Guard, state police, park and tourism people, as well as law enforcement, emergency management personnel.