Intro like something out of an action movie that is how an emotional Baltimore mayor has described the collapse of a major bridge in that US city overnight declaring a state of emergency amid the desperate search for survivors the 2.6 kilomet long Francis Scott Key bridge came down when a large slip ship slammed into it in the early hours of the morning local time several construction workers were on the bridge at the time of the incident two have been rescued but the remaining six are missing let's go stra to our correspondent Barbara Miller who's on the scene there in Barbara Miller Baltimore Barbara good morning to you talk us through what happened here well this took place about 1:30 in the morning local time Lisa and as you say a cargo ship plowed into the Key Bridge there's very very dramatic footage of that happening now if you look at that footage what you see is that the lights on the cargo ship appear to be flickering as it approaches the bridge and what authorities have now said is that there was an emergency call from The Vessel shortly before the incident and the crew said that they were having power issues that there was a power outage it plows into the pylon and really within seconds the entire Key Bridge comes down it just crumbles we're just uh on the North approach to that bridge now um you can see perhaps in the background there just huge bits of the steel parts of this bridge sticking up from the water this really all unfolded in in as I say just a matter of seconds now some conflicting reports from authorities uh initially suggesting there were perhaps more people on that bridge they're now talking in terms of those eight construction workers two accounted for but a major search operation underway for six people not yet accounted for and what the governor W MO is saying is that the emergency call from the cargo ship in advance allowed them to stop traffic here so that more people didn't flow onto the bridge investigation is still going on uh to find out exactly exactly how many people in what situation but the thing that we do know is that uh is that uh many of the vehicles were stopped before they got onto the bridge which uh which which uh saved lives in in a in a very very R way so yeah it's just incredible ABC News Barbara I mean tens of thousands of people use this bridge it is such a key part of infrastructure so what happens now what what goes beyond Baltimore with this that's right normally up and down here this is a major East Coast archery say you were going from DC up to Delaware up to New York as you see tens of thousands of people each day and estimated 30,000 people in fact use this bridge it's aw of bypassing Bol Baltimore but the Port of Baltimore which this cargo ship was departing a major port the major US port for the Import and Export of cars so the ramifications of these huge thousands of jobs tied up here at the port and we've heard Lisa already from the president saying that he will move Heaven and Earth to try and get this port functioning again no one's giving a timeline on that at the moment and he's Pro promising to try and get Federal funding to rebuild this bridge but for the moment although the hopes are dwindling if not lost completely this is still a search operation for those missing workers and any other potential victims who were on that bridge as it collapse in the early hours of this morning e