anchoring system down. we are looking towards potentially next tuesday bringing an additional production vessel online. that will get us to the previously briefed 53,000 barrel a day capacity. that s notwithstanding the removal of the containment cap today for the issue that i ve just talked about. on a more somber note, we had two deaths reported on people who were involved in this response earlier today. one was an accident regarding a swimming pool swimming event, and another one was a vessel of opportunity operator in gulf shores, mississippi. our thoughts and prayers go out to their family. we know this is a devastating thing to happen, and we understand that the gulf shores police department is following up on the death of the vessel of opportunity operator. with that, i m pleased today to present a co presenter with me, previously identified, jordan barab, secretary of labor for osha. we ve got a number of questions over the last few weeks about worker safety. and exposure of
but in fact two people involved with the response have been killed. we believe they were civilians and not a part of the coast guard, military or anything like that. but people who were actually working down there have been killed. not a lot of details but we did hear from admiral thad allen some details he gave us just a short time ago. take a listen. we had two deaths reported on people involved in this response earlier today. one was an accident regarding a swimming event and the other was a vessel operator in gulf shores, mississippi. our thoughts and prayers go out to their families. this is a devastating thing to happen and we understand the gulf shores police department is following up on the death of the vessel of opportunity operator. a vessel of opportunity operator is a reference to the shrimpers, some of the boaters who can t work because of the gulf oil. they went out and they used their own vessels to help out in the gulf oil response. that s what s called a vessel of
thing to happen, and we understand the gulf shore s police department is following up on the death of the vessel of opportunity operator. you hear there are not a lot of details from admiral allen. let s bring in our chris lawrence who can possibly give us more details about what s going on right now. chris, hello to you, and really some astonishing news on a couple fronts. one, the fact of the two deaths, but also the fact that the containment cap is not on. and we want to handle both of those things. let s go first with just the pictures we re seeing with oil going into the gulf, with nothing stopping it. why has the cap been removed? well, it all started, t.j., early this morning, just before 9:00 this morning, they noticed some liquid, some liquid discharge, coming through there. and so they took the containment cap off to check that liquid. and that is what is happening right now. they are looking to see if this is if that liquid contains hydrates. these are sort of ice-like
cleanup effort. on a more somber note, we had two deaths reported people involved in this response earlier today. one was an accident regarding a swimming pool, a swimming event, and the other one was a vessel of opportunity operator. let s get more from michelle franzen live from pensacola beach where we re seeing more oil wash ashore on the heels now of this breaking news of this containment cap is off and we saw the late he is images of more oil now dwushing. all of that back into the gulf. reporter: that s exactly right. certainly problems offshore, problems on shore. let s give you a look. this washed up on pensacola as louisiana. they re trying to clean it up. there s 3 mi8 miles of shore li and about 75% is affected. you can see it s still washing up here at high tide. governor charlie crist did an assessment here earlier today. he said he s disgusted.