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Good morning. We'd like to provide an update on the oil spill in Baltimore City that took place yesterday, and I first want to start by thanking those who were first on the scene, uh, including the heroic actions of the Baltimore City Fire Department, and I also want to thank Mayor Scott and Johns Hopkins and the Maryland Department of Environment for their coordination. Uh, this is, uh, watching the coordination. That we've seen here has not just been important it's been incredibly impressive and I'd also like to recognize all of the emergency crew, the emergency personnel from the city of Baltimore from the state of Maryland, and also from the United States Coast Guard. This has been *** robust and *** truly collective effort. That we've now seen 10 different city and state agencies that have been deployed and we've mobilized assets from local. State and also on the federal levels, and Mayor Scott and I were on site yesterday with our partners to manage and monitor the response efforts and all the response teams have moved in close coordination with each other and for that we are deeply, deeply proud and grateful. Emergency personnel work through the night to help contain the situation. We have seen over 100 personnel literally worked through the night to make sure that we had this situation under control and contained, and there's one thing I've learned about this team that I stand with, uh, that I'm standing with here is that uh also in the military I learned that uh that you develop *** muscle memory with your unit, and I think all of us had that experience yesterday. Where we were snapping in *** place and getting into work and I'm grateful to have this team uh to uh to my flank in this work. This is *** team that has done hard things before. This is *** challenging assignment, but this is also *** team that in challenging assignments and challenging times does not flinch, and we are grateful. We know how to move fast. We know how to move together, and we and we know how to keep things under control and the Coast Guard and their contract, the Coast Guard and the contractor are using oil absorbent materials and skimmers that feed into *** 4000 gallon pump truck. That also includes in addition to the over 100 personnel who have worked over through the night. That includes the fact that we have 3 skimmers out here. We have 6 va trucks, we have 1000 ft of sweep, and we have 600 ft of boom already deployed and as of this morning we have no evidence to suggest there is any impact on drinking water in the area. Now despite that, I do want to be clear that we still have work to do and we ask that all Marylanders are using alternate routes away from Harbor East and allow the emergency personnel to do their jobs. Avoiding the area will help to ensure that our emergency personnel can make sure that they can get this mission accomplished efficiently and effectively, and transportation enforcement officers will be on site to help with traffic during peak hour travel time this morning. With that, I'm gonna turn the program over to my friend and partner in the work, Mayor Brandon Scott for additional details on traffic and to outline Baltimore City's role in the response. Mayor Scott. Good morning and thank you, uh, Mr. Governor, uh, for your leadership. Uh, I'm sure as everyone can tell this is another all hands on deck uh response and as the governor said, there isn't *** better team, uh, to do this than the folks standing with us. We have *** muscle memory and everyone has been through *** lot together, but when you've been through *** lot together, you can accomplish *** lot together. I wanna start by thanking our partners, starting with our partners at the state led by our governor of the Coast Guard, everybody. From the city of Baltimore, from the fire department, emergency management, DPW, transportation, all of our agencies, the police department that have been working here, our partners with Hopkins that have collaborated with us on this, and contractors, including the Miller Environmental Group. And unfortunately, as you know, this isn't the first time that we've had to stand up an emergency response like this, and we know from that experience that between us working together seamlessly is the only way to accomplish the goal, as you can. See this response is still ongoing, but for now, here's what Baltimoreans should know. First, we can smell gas. Obviously you can smell that gas and we can see the oil on the water, but we know people are understandably concerned. But again, as you just heard, there is no impact to drinking water, and we're doing everything that we can to mitigate any environmental impacts of the spill. We are proud of the progress that was made overnight. Over the recent years, uh, to improve the harbor, we have that at the front of our minds as everyone does this work today and we're just as committed today as we've ever been. Second, uh, emergency road closures are in effect and Harbor East focused around Central Avenue and expanding several blocks from this site at the South Central Avenue Bridge, even North. We anticipate *** uh disruption during rush hour and that that will continue through today. As you heard, officers will be on site, uh, during rush hour to help direct traffic, but we are encouraging drivers to avoid the area if possible. Uh, this isn't *** time to travel down here to try to look and see, stay away unless you have to come to this area. There are also additional traffic disruption throughout East Baltimore, uh, centered around where Johns Hop. Consist East Baltimore and Fayette, Orleans and side streets in that area. So make sure that you're avoiding those areas as well, as well as we work closely to to around the original spill uh facility. Our top priority today, tomorrow, and every day is the safety of our residents and our environment, and we're going to do everything in our power to restore. of the area as quickly as possible without compromising of that safety and once again I am grateful for the continued support of this team and their teamwork and I'm grateful to all of the men and women who've been out here all night and those who have worked throughout the day and until this mission is complete. Uh with that, I will turn it over to our incident commander of Fire Chief Wallace. Thank you Mr. Mayor and good morning. um I wanna start off by acknowledging, uh, Governor Moore and Mayor Scott for for not only their leadership but for coming out here last night, being on the ground with us being here late into the night and getting us the resources that we need um, as the mayor said, um, I'm currently the incident commander, however, this is *** unified command approach as the city of Baltimore always does, um, I, I'll give you *** little bit of historical background with this so, um, yesterday afternoon. Our initial response was alongside of the Maryland Department of the Environment and the United States Coast Guard by way of those three agencies, uh, harbor boom was deployed on the water very, very rapidly, and I want to stress that level of coordination and those actions taken by those three agencies have really reduced the footprint of this incident. This could have been far, far worse than what it was. We've since then located uh where we believe the leak occurred throughout the night we have brought in contractors uh that are working right now behind us. Once the contractors arrived, uh, we began to skim product off of the water. um, this is *** heating oil product you'll notice that it's red, um, so we began to skim that off the water and contain that. Through the remainder of the night into the early morning and where we are right now um we've began an operation where we're opening up fire hydrants and we're starting to flush the storm drain system. What's important is we need to push the product down, push it down to the harbor where we have skimmers, where we have capability to capture and and retain product. So that's the operation right now. This operation will continue. Uh, through *** majority of the day there will continue to be an odor, so we want to stress to our residents there will continue to be an odor here, um, and I just wanna again highlight speed and coordination was the key to where we're at now. Very speedy response, solid coordination partnership with our state and federal resources have put us into the position right now that's what's gonna drive the remainder of the day and and actually the coming days, um, and then finally I wanna thank the business. Community for your patients we've brought in *** lot of resources uh *** lot of our resources showed up on *** on *** no notice basis and the business community has just been amazing. They've worked with us very well um and we'll continue to work with them throughout the day. Thank you. Good morning, uh, Jeff Donny with the Maryland Department of Environment. I too would like to echo my thanks for the, uh, cooperation and support from both our. You know, city counterparts, our federal counterparts, our other state counterparts as well as our, our private sector counterpart from Johns Hopkins, uh, as everybody's mentioned so far, this is truly *** team effort. So throughout the course of the night while we were amassing the resources needed to do the clean up, we were sitting there mapping out following the storm drain maps so we could isolate and ensure that we knew where the product flow was going to be so that when we do begin the flushing operation or we did that earlier this morning. That we knew where it was going to come out and there were no unexpected consequences there. Um, we did identify several oiled water fowl, uh, specifically geese last night 5 of those were captured and taken to *** wildlife rehabber through the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. Uh, we had 6 others that were identified during the course of the night that we have *** rehabber coming. Uh, this morning around 7 o'clock we're anticipating them being here to take those as well, um. That being said, thank you. Governor, do we know exactly how this happened? What was the actual spill? How did it happen? Uh, we're we're, we're still, uh, getting the full analysis of exactly what happened. What we know is, uh, at approximately 9:30 yesterday morning was when, uh, when we have the first accounts of, of the, of the leakage. uh, we know that uh after communication from from Johns Hopkins University, uh, that, uh, that at around 7 p.m. that we're notified. that the initial number that we saw, heard of the 200 was actually probably closer to 2000 and so but really since since around 9:30 we know was the initial time of the leakage, but we're still going through all the all the analysis and I know and working with Johns Hopkins to also be able to identify the full forensics as to what happened is this *** pipeline. It's been here before there was development here that's being used, Mayor. Yes, you, you know that we, we have to think about two different parts of the city. Uh, yes, we know there's up where we're talking about further away from here that is very, very old infrastructure and obviously coming down Central Avenue we have new portions, so you're talking about uh uh old systems mixing with new systems and. And vice versa. So that's why we had DPW here. They have the capability to look at that by GIS mapping, but we also had them physically going and popping manholes because nothing beats being able to see it or in this case see it and smell it with your own eyes, ears, and nose. You said that there's no threat to drinking water is any threat to public safety, any other issues with the smell? No, no, no, no threats, uh, we just obviously to state the obvious we don't want folks out getting in the water, right, but there's no threat to public safety. Just to clarify with this. Was it leaked through like *** container or was it leaked like from *** building like. So that's *** part of the investigation about how the spill actually happened but it is it is diesel fuel. Can you tell us the question was asked about air quality, um, impacting the oil with the. about that and how are you monitoring air quality. We're monitoring the air quality um right now and so yes we we're gonna make sure that um we're monitoring what's going on but again right now we're there's no impact at this point but yeah as the sun goes up we will continue. Where are we at with the containment right now? Earlier we heard 100 by 250 yard where are we at now? So can you, did you say containment, right, so, so the incident footprint right now on the water is, is behind us. It's approximately 100 yards wide by about 250 yards long. We have it contained within this particular footprint as we flush upstream. We're gonna bring product down we're gonna bring it into this area, but the strategy has been contain where we're at right now, reinforce that, bring the remainder of the product down, keep it contained, so we're, we're absolutely on schedule with where we had planned to be about midnight last night. Good for *** couple more folks. Are there any fines that could come anybody's way from this happening? All of that, all of those things about fines and costs and all that, it will be determined later. Right now the focus and the most important thing is that we're actually making sure that we get the water clean, get the stuff out of the system, all of that we can talk to you guys about at *** later time. And speaking of getting the water clean, the harbor splash plan for later this month. Any potential impact on We'll see, uh, we'll see. We, we know that folks are looking very excited about doing that just for *** little further up, uh, upstream, but we'll see what happens. How much of this it's also *** race against the potential for rain. I know you safety for all the first responders, but the potential for rain, how much is in *** race, Chief? So, so thank you for that question. It is that's why we're doing the flush the way we are right now. We wanna control that we wanna force that flow, but we wanna do it in *** controlled manner. So that's exactly what we're trying to do right now should. This happened and rain come behind it we're gonna lose control right in the worst case scenario but right now, as I said we're absolutely on schedule it's *** great question that's we've talked about that through the night and that's why we're doing what we're doing now and how we're doing it. Alright guys thank you so much.