Wreckage believed to be of the cargo ship El Faro, which was lost off the Bahamas along with its crew of 33 during Hurricane Joaquin, was discovered on Saturday, US officials said.
El Faro disappeared on Oct. 1 en route from Jacksonville, Florida, to Puerto Rico in the worst cargo shipping disaster involving a US-flagged vessel since 1983, after the captain reported a “hull breach” and said a hatch had blown open.
A search team aboard the US Navy’s Apache vessel using sonar equipment discovered the wreckage on Saturday in the area of El Faro’s last known position at a depth of 4,572m, the US National Transportation Safety Board said in a statement.
Photo: AFP
The board said officials planned to use a remotely operated submersible as early as yesterday to confirm the find.
“To confirm the finding, specialists on Apache will use CURV 21, a deep-ocean remotely operated vehicle to survey and confirm the identity of the wreckage,’’ said a statement e-mailed by Peter Knudson of the agency’s public affairs office in Washington.
“This survey could begin as early as Nov. 1,” he said.
However, it said the wreckage was consistent with a 790-foot (241m) cargo ship, and appeared to be intact in an upright position.
A video camera mounted on the submersible was to be used to document the wreckage and debris field, and locate the ship’s voyage data recorder, similar to the black box on airplanes, the statement said.
The discovery followed an earlier, failed attempt by the Apache to detect pings from El Faro’s voyage data recorder by using equipment called a towed pinger locator.
Most of El Faro’s crew were American.
Board officials on Oct. 20 said that the captain, aside from saying in a recorded satellite phone call that the El Faro was taking on water in one of the holds, had reported it had lost its main propulsion unit and engineers could not restart it.
The cargo ship’s owner, New Jersey-based Tote Inc, has said that loss of propulsion likely spelled the ship’s doom.
It was not yet clear if the hull breach was directly related to the loss of propulsion.
Tote Services filed for protection in US federal court in Florida on Friday, citing US maritime law and saying the ship was “seaworthy and properly manned” and that the company bears no responsibility for its loss.
Thousands gathered across New Zealand yesterday to celebrate the signing of the country’s founding document and some called for an end to government policies that critics say erode the rights promised to the indigenous Maori population. As the sun rose on the dawn service at Waitangi where the Treaty of Waitangi was first signed between the British Crown and Maori chiefs in 1840, some community leaders called on the government to honor promises made 185 years ago. The call was repeated at peaceful rallies that drew several hundred people later in the day. “This government is attacking tangata whenua [indigenous people] on all
The administration of US President Donald Trump has appointed to serve as the top public diplomacy official a former speech writer for Trump with a history of doubts over US foreign policy toward Taiwan and inflammatory comments on women and minorities, at one point saying that "competent white men must be in charge." Darren Beattie has been named the acting undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs, a senior US Department of State official said, a role that determines the tone of the US' public messaging in the world. Beattie requires US Senate confirmation to serve on a permanent basis. "Thanks to
UNDAUNTED: Panama would not renew an agreement to participate in Beijing’s Belt and Road project, its president said, proposing technical-level talks with the US US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday threatened action against Panama without immediate changes to reduce Chinese influence on the canal, but the country’s leader insisted he was not afraid of a US invasion and offered talks. On his first trip overseas as the top US diplomat, Rubio took a guided tour of the canal, accompanied by its Panamanian administrator as a South Korean-affiliated oil tanker and Marshall Islands-flagged cargo ship passed through the vital link between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. However, Rubio was said to have had a firmer message in private, telling Panama that US President Donald Trump
‘IMPOSSIBLE’: The authors of the study, which was published in an environment journal, said that the findings appeared grim, but that honesty is necessary for change Holding long-term global warming to 2°C — the fallback target of the Paris climate accord — is now “impossible,” according to a new analysis published by leading scientists. Led by renowned climatologist James Hansen, the paper appears in the journal Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development and concludes that Earth’s climate is more sensitive to rising greenhouse gas emissions than previously thought. Compounding the crisis, Hansen and colleagues argued, is a recent decline in sunlight-blocking aerosol pollution from the shipping industry, which had been mitigating some of the warming. An ambitious climate change scenario outlined by the UN’s climate
RSS