FRANK SESNO, CNN ANCHOR: In Philadelphia, investigators are trying to determine why a pier supporting a nightclub collapsed into the Delaware River last night. Three people died, dozens were injured. CNN national correspondent Bob Franken is at the scene, and he joins us now with an update -- Bob.</s>BOB FRANKEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Frank, officials just completed a news conference in which they said they hope, they feel that there is nobody else unaccounted for, that would mean that the death toll was three with about 30 injured, after the pier collapsed here, which appeared that held a brand new restaurant called the Heat causing people to tumble into the ground. Officials are taking no choices. There is a major salvage operation on today. Starting with the effort to find out if divers can actually go in the water to make sure that there are no bodies down there. The divers would not go down until the Army Corp of Engineers, which is leading this salvage operation, certified that it was safe, that there was not the danger of a further collapse. Now this was on a pier that is about 100 years old, and the collapse came last night about 8:00, causing people to tumble about eight feet into the water, which was about 30 feet deep. A canopy came down over them. Officials say that they are not only going to try and decide what to do with this pier, but all this piers in this historic part of Philadelphia.</s>EDWARD MCLAUGHLIN, LICENSE AND INSPECTION, CITY OF PHILADELPHIA: We are working with the Army Corp of Engineers. We have hired Hudson Engineering. They are going to be our agents. They are going to be the city's agents to oversee this, to conduct a forensic investigation to determine exactly what happened, what the dynamic was that caused that failure.</s>FRANKEN: Now, as for this pier, it had collapsed once before, another section of it, about 1994. It was repaired, certified safe by local officials. As I said, they are going to investigate this particular pier and the rest along the historic Delaware River -- Frank.</s>SESNO: Bob Franken, thanks very much.
Philadelphia Investigators Trying to Determine Cause of Fatal Pier Collapse