A cargo ship captain who worked for the company that owned the doomed freighter El Faro testified Tuesday that he was fired after reporting safety concerns about his ship. Capt. Jack Hearn, who sailed for a Tote Services Inc. subsidiary, testified before a U.S. Coast Guard panel in Jacksonville that is investigating the 41-year-old El […]
El Faro Was on Coast Guard List of At-Risk Vessels
The El Faro sank just before it was to be added to a Coast Guard list of vessels identified as having the most “potential for risk,” a designation that would have triggered more safety inspections. The El Faro was to be included on the so-called “targeting list,” which compiled the top 10 percent of ships […]
Hearings Attempt to Solve Mysteries of El Faro Sinking
A series of U.S. Coast Guard hearings starting Tuesday will seek answers about why the 790-foot freighter El Faro sank near the Bahamas last fall, killing all 33 crew members in the worst U.S. commercial maritime disaster in decades. The hearings in Jacksonville are expected to probe many questions, chief among them whether misconduct, negligence […]
NTSB Releases Photos Showing El Faro in Final Resting Place
Federal accident investigators are considering launching another search of the wreckage of a freighter that sank in October in an attempt to locate the ship’s “black box.” Tom Roth-Roffy, the lead investigator for National Transportation Safety Board, told The Associated Press that a weeks-long search found one of the El Faro’s missing decks, but not […]
Photos of the Day: Images Released of El Faro Wreckage
In this photograph released by the National Transportation Safety Board, the damaged stern of the sunken freighter El Faro is seen on the seafloor, 15,000-feet deep near the Bahamas. Read more: NTSB Releases Photos Showing El Faro in Final Resting Place The freighter sunk on Oct. 1, 2015, after losing engine power and getting caught […]
Crews End Search of Sunken Ship Without Finding Black Box
Federal investigators said Monday that they are ending their search for the voyage data recorder of a cargo ship that sank in the Atlantic during a hurricane, but remained hopeful that they could determine what happened to the ship without it. “Over the years we’ve completed many investigations without the aid of recorders and other […]
Feds: Wreckage Identified as Ill-Fated Cargo Ship El Faro
Federal investigators on Monday identified wreckage found 15,000 feet deep in the sea as that of the ill-fated cargo ship El Faro. The National Transportation Safety Board said on Twitter that the survey of the deep-water site will continue as investigators continue seeking more information about the final moments of the ship and its crew. […]
Images Released of Shipwreck in San Francisco Bay
Federal ocean scientists have released images of the wreckage of a steamship that sank in San Francisco Bay in 1888, a disaster that killed 16 people. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s James Delgado said Wednesday that the sinking of the City of Chester was the second-worst shipwreck to occur in the bay. Three-dimensional images […]
Hearing Focuses on Mistakes Made on Bridge
After numerous delays and cost overruns, pressure to complete the new $6.4 billion eastern span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge led to pieces being created with cracked welds and other subpar work, government and private engineers told a state Senate commission on Friday. The engineers did not conclude the new span is unsafe, but […]
Saving Whales with New Phone App
Marine scientists looking for new ways to reduce the number of whales struck and killed off California’s coast by massive commercial ships have turned to a familiar tool: mobile devices. An app called “Whale Spotter” uses crowd-sourcing to gather data, allowing sailors, fishermen and marine scientists who spot whales to plot their location on an […]