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search conditions for five crew members of a u.s. navy helicopter that crashed into the pacific tuesday afternoon 60 miles off san diego. one crew member was rescued. the chopper had been aboard the u.s.s. "abraham lincoln." there is no word on the cause. all right, now this, late today, a federal bankruptcy judge gave conditional approval to a multibillion-dollar plan to settle lawsuits against purdue pharma, the maker of oxycontin. that company is blamed for helping cause the opioid crisis. tonight, its owners said they are sorry for the suffering and loss. cbs' anna werner gets reaction on the settlement. ( siren ) >> reporter: the opioid epidemic killed over 500,000 americans, and drove the makers of oxycontin into bankruptcy. under the plan approved today, the sackler family will forfeit ownership of purdue pharma, turn over 30 million documents and pay $4.5 billion. in return, the sacklers cannot be sued. a majority of states accepted the plan, but others plan to appeal.
28 chinese tourists are adrift along with one crew member and awaiting rescue off of the coast of eastern malaysia. the catamaran left the dock on saturday headinged to a popular island to celebrate the new year. let's take a look now at weather conditions near the search plus the bitter cold impacting much of europe. we're going to turn to meteorologist julie martin at the international weather center. >> this is a look at the weather that has been moving through this area over the last day where the searches have been taking place as of now. as i take a closer look in, i can show you exactly where it look looked like the ship departed. the search conditions for the forecast are going to be quite rough for those search and rescue and recovery efforts if need be. showers and thunderstorms, very warm here in time of the year in
aircraft. we flew it very high, up at 27,000 feet altitude so we could scan a very wide area. we've covered 70,000 square nautical miles yesterday, looking for the "el faro," so based on all of that, for our search planning efforts, we are assuming that the vessel has sank. we believe it sank in the last known position that we recorded on thursday. so, what that means, though, we just change our search-planning efforts. we are still looking for survivors or any signs of life, any signs of that vessel. we are still doing that. so, the search for survivors continues. yesterday, because of those favorable search conditions, we were able to see a lot of material that was at sea. a lot of things that came from a container ship, of that size. so, we know we recovered the "el faro's" life ring. we also recovered a life boat
be getting a bit of a break. some more roads are re-opening so traffic is moving but as you can see behind me, some neighborhoods here are still under water and it's happening throughout the state. this has been an extremely devastating time for south carolina. but it will take a long time to clean this up. >> gabe, sorry to cut you short. we want to get to miami and the coast guard news conference about the missing cargo ship they believe has sank. >> -- was essentially sitting right over it so we weren't able to get there. on saturday we could get to the vessel's last known position but the search conditions were horrible. we were facing 100-mile-an-hour winds, 40 foot seas, less than a mile visibility so we couldn't really get a good picture, a good idea of what was out there. yesterday was the first day we where we really had favorable search conditions and we took advantage of that. we had multiple long-range aircraft out there, including coast guard, c-130s and air force c-130 and a navy p-8.
i want to just focus on the navy p-8 aircraft. that's a pretty sophisticated aircraft. we flew it very high up at 27,000 feet altitude so we could scan a very wide area. we covered 70,000 square nautical miles yesterday looking for the el fargo. based on all of that, for our search planning efforts we are assuming that the vessel has sank. we believe it sank in the last known position that we recorded on thursday. so what that means though, we just change our search planning efforts. we are still looking for survivors or any signs of life, any signs of that vessel. we are still doing that. so the search for survivors continues. yesterday, because of those favorable search conditions, we were able to see a lot of material that was at sea. a lot of things that came from a container ship of that size.
>> and right now, in fact, they're giving us the update. let's listen in. >> anybody who has had contact with the steamship "el faro" so we wanted to provide you an update. we started our search efforts on friday. at that time we were not able to get to the vessel's last known position because hurricane joaquin was sitting right over it. we weren't able to get there. on saturday we could get to the vessel's last known position but the search conditions were horrible. we were facing 100-mile-an-hour winds, 40-foot seas, less than a mile visibility, so we really couldn't get a good picture, a good idea of what was out there. yesterday was the first day where we really had favorable search conditions. we took advantage of that. we had multiple long-range aircraft out there, including coast guard c-130s and air force c-130 and a navy p-8 aircraft. i want to just focus on the navy p-8 aircraft. that's a pretty sophisticated
ship. >> sophisticated aircraft. we flew it very high, up at 27,000 feet altitude, so we can scan a very wide area. we covered 70,000 square nautical miles yesterday looking for the el far are o. so based on all of that, for our search planning efforts, we are assuming that the vessel has sank. we believe it sank in the last known position that we recorded on thursday. so what that means, though, we just change our search planning efforts. we are still looking for survivors or any signs of life, any signs of that vessel. we are still doing that. so the search for survivors continues. yesterday, because of those favorable search conditions, we were able to see a lot of material that was at sea. a lot of things that came from a container ship of that size. so we know we recovered the el faro's life ring, we also
have images of lifeboat. what is on the ship to help save the crew. >> there are two lifeboats on board. they are boats and capable on the el faro of carrying 43 people. and they are hard structures that can be lowered. and they have life ra fts in a case and manually inflated and built and designed if a vessel sink and it is pressure triggered the mechism and there are three on board. >> you mentioned finding remanents of the lifeboat in the water. >> yesterday. we had good search conditions and we located a lot of debris from the ship. and what we did. we received multiple reports of
development and the calculations that we put in to developing where the ship may be and finding that life ring late yesterday afternoon was a key development that certainly reinforced and validated what we were thinking where that ship or crew may be since it's been more than 72 hours since we've heard from the "el faro." >> i wanted to ask you, commander, are you in touch with the family of the crew members? maybe they have texted them? what about social media? have you checked for their latest posts? >> the coast guard is in constant communication with the family and the company. o again, i think it's really important to note that what we are seeing out there, this is the first day of really good search conditions. we're finding a lot of things in the water. but we cannot confirm or