Second round of hearings underway in Florida

Wed, 05/18/2016 - 7:15pm

Holly S. Edwards

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — A second round of Marine Board of Investigation hearings is underway in Jacksonville, Fla., this week, as officials continue to gather information into the circumstances surrounding the fall 2015 sinking of the U.S.-flagged cargo ship El Faro in Hurricane Joaquin.

The hearings began May 16 and are scheduled to continue daily, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., through Friday, May 27. The National Transportation Safety Board, which is conducting its own investigation, is fully participating in the Marine Board of Investigation hearing, according to a news release.

This round of public hearings is focusing on shipboard operations, cargo loading, and lashing and stowage operations for the accident voyage while also examining the vessel's forecasted stability, and weather conditions forecasted and encountered.

The third hearing, whose date is yet to be determined, is expected to examine additional elements of the investigation, including information from crew witnesses, TOTE Maritime company officials and contents of El Faro's Voyage Data Recorder, if it can be recovered and analyzed.

El Faro and its 33 crew members were lost at sea on Oct. 1, 2015. Wreckage of the ship was eventually located on the bottom of ocean, off the Bahamas, at a depth of about 15,000 feet. It was located Oct. 31 by a search team on board the U.S. Navy ship Apache in the vicinity of its last known position on the morning of its last radio contact with the ship's owner TOTE Maritime.

According to a Reuters story posted on the website gCaptain.com, U.S. Coast Guard investigators May 16 learned that the ship's captain, Maine Maritime graduate Michael Davidson, 53, of Windham, "had said he planned to 'go out and shoot under,' meaning avoid, a storm brewing in the Caribbean."

When the 790-foot-long El Faro sank, it was two days out of port in Jacksonville and heading for the island of Puerto Rico when it ran into the storm and sank. It was carrying 391 deck containers and 294 trailers and cars below deck, with the cargo consisting of grocery items, cars and retail products, according to TOTE Maritime officials. El Faro was one of two TOTE Maritime ships that departed Jacksonville that Tuesday, destined for Puerto Rico.

Of the 33 crew aboard El Faro, 28 were U.S. Citizens, five of them from Maine and all Maine Maritime graduates. The remaining five crew were Pollish nationals.

Between Oct. 1 and Oct. 7, 183,000-square nautical miles of ocean had been searched off the Bahamian coast in a joint effort to locate survivors and signs of the ill-fated cargo ship. It wasn't until the early afternoon of Oct. 31, 2015, that a side-scanning sonar system, being towed from Apache, first detected what was eventually confirmed to be the ship's wreckage.

That finding was confirmed two days later, on Nov. 2, by a deep ocean remotely operated vehicle, called CURV 21. While surveying and documenting the debris field, the ship's navigation bridge, the deck below and its data recorder were missing. Those items were eventually located last month, on April 26.

On April 27, the NTSB announced that specialized equipment would be needed to recover El Faro's VDR, and news about that work has yet to be announced to the public.

To follow daily updates on the hearings, visit gCaptain.com.