[Chris Cuomo, Cnn Anchor:] Welcome back. We're following breaking news this morning. A dramatic search and rescue effort is underway in South Korea after a ferry carrying 459 people abruptly started to sink. Many people on board are high school students. As many as 300, including those students, are still missing, four are confirmed dead, but those estimates are early. We're going to bring inspector general for the department of transportation, Mary Schiavo, but I want to show you some things about how just quickly this happened in a matter of hours. This was the ferry, immediately listing, and very suggestive that something catastrophic happened on board. This ferry carries cars, as many as 150. It has these big intake doors. Maybe it hit something, they say, onboard. They felt a big bump and a lurching and then the ship started to list to one side. Within a very short order of time, it's all the way on its side. This makes it almost impossible to get out because you have to climb as much as 150 feet, like you were on the side of a mountain. And now, this is all that's left. But and now we bring in Mary Schiavo. This last picture, as dramatic as it looks, may be a cause for hope, Mary, because if the bow of that ship is still able to be above water, that means that there could be displacement of air underneath it, yes?
[Mary Schiavo, Cnn Aviation Analyst:] Yes. And the United States Coast Guard has encountered many rescues like this where they've actually cut through the bottom of the ship, the hull of the ship, and found people alive. So it is possible, absolutely.
[Cuomo:] Now, the concern is that you have darkness and you have cold water, they believe 40 degrees Fahrenheit there, 20 kilometers or so off the mainland, and you have fast-moving currents. What does that do for the ability of divers to go under water and essentially enter a matrix of caves?
[Schiavo:] Well, it's tough on the divers but, you know, obviously, not only for people in the water, but people on the ship, where they're you know, they'll be in the water as well searching for air pockets, of course. It's a tough dive duty and, you know, tough to get in. They have to maneuver their way through the ship. The rescues that I mentioned with the Coast Guard, sometimes they have cut right through the hull. Granted they have been able to send people in and get people out from ships. But it's tough. It's dangerous. They have lost rescuers that way. But, you know, that's the only hope at this point is to go and get them out or go through the hull.
[Cuomo:] Ferry is a misleading term. This is a 500-foot-long ship. It's like a cruise ship. How does something this big go down so fast, so fast that they have to have people jump off for their lives?
[Schiavo:] Well, because of the speed and because of the sound that had been reported by a couple ear witnesses, it leads me to think, based on previous ferry boat accidents, that it must have had a breach in the hull, that it struck something under water, which means it was probably out of the channel, because those channels are well maintained in major shipping lanes. And that would explain when you have an engine fire, an engine explosion, you usually don't have that kind of scenario. You often have, you know, that's probably the second most commonplace thing is to have something explode or a fire in the engine room. But that doesn't usually breach the hull. That causes other problems on the ship. So one would assume, based on prior ferry accidents, that it hit something. And then for the water to come in that quickly, you would suspect one of my first suspects to go check out would be those big ferry doors through which the vehicles enter the ship.
[Cuomo:] Now, they have cranes that are coming. They believe they're able to salvage this ship, which is amazing to hear. But they're not going to be there in any amount of time to help with the rescue. So this really comes down to what they're able to perform in those boats through the darkness, right? Time's against them.
[Schiavo:] Right. Right. In the boats through the darkness either divers getting on the ship and going through the various passageways of the ship, or literally going through the hull of the ship. If they're intent on salvaging it and then redeploying the ship, refloating the ship, I don't know if they'll go through the hull or not. That might be a you know, they may not want that. But to search for survivors, I would certainly think that you'd want to try to do that.
[Cuomo:] All right, Mary, thank you again.
[Schiavo:] Thank you.
[Cuomo:] Once again, we have a rescue operation going on where there are hundreds of families waiting for word on loved ones. This time many of them believed to be teenagers. Kate.
[Bolduan:] All right, Chris, thank you. Coming up next on NEW DAY, Ukraine's dissent toward possible war. Is there a peaceful way out at this point? A former U.S. assistant secretary of state joining us next to discuss.