Search resumes for ship missing off Bahamas in Hurricane Joaquin

This NOAA satellite image taken Sunday, October 4, 2015.at 9:45 AM EDT shows slowly weakening Hurricane Joaquin southwest of Bermuda, moving in a north-northeast direction.

Authorities last heard from the ship Thursday.

The Coast Guard has not confirmed that the oil sheen belongs to the El Faro.

He said the retrieval of the life ring validated the Coast Guard’s search process.

U.S. Coast Guard and Navy aircraft combed the Atlantic Ocean around the lightly populated Crooked Island for the El Faro, which was en route from Jacksonville, Florida to San Juan, Puerto Rico at the height of the powerful storm.

An Air Force base in south Mississippi says two planes with “Hurricane Hunter” air crews that flew into Hurricane Joaquin had also been involved in the search for the US cargo ship lost with 33 people on board. At the time of the El Faro’s departure, the vessel’s officers and crew were monitoring what was then Tropical Storm Joaquin. The ship was heading to Puerto Rico on a regular cargo supply run to the US island territory when it ran into trouble. It went missing as Hurricane Joaquin, with winds blowing at 130 miles per hour, passed over the archipelago.

The 735-foot (224-meter) ship named El Faro had taken on water and was earlier reported to be listing at 15 degrees near Crooked Island, one of the islands most battered by the hurricane.

Life jackets, containers and an oil sheen were spotted by U.S. Coast Guard aircrews flying over the Bahamas on the third day of their search for the container ship.

The ship has a crew of 33, 28 of them Americans.

“This is torture”, Mary Shevory, mother of crew member Mariette Wright.

“It could have been much worse if that hurricane shifted to the west”, McCrory told CNN.

Somma said just how the El Faro got caught in the eye of a Category 4 hurricane is a question that the Coast Guard can not answer. “We had all these kids playing [American] football and lacrosse”. Everyone on that ship is strong and they’re trained.

“This is a top-notch captain”.

Without naming Davidson, Greene said the captain had been observing the weather for several days, and on Wednesday sent a message to the home office “saying that he had very good weather and what his intentions were, and that his crew was fully prepared … he had intentions of passing in front of the weather system with an adequate margin”. He had the best intentions. “They are just going to make me cry”. “We are doing everything we can to bring back everyone alive”, said Chief Petty Officer Bobby Nash, Coast Guard spokesman.

Flooding is a major concern for a number of reasons: directly from all the rains, indirectly from rivers and creeks possibly overflowing their banks, and also from storm surges fanned by strong winds.

The states of North and South Carolina have been particularly hard hit, and experts say the worst is not over yet. But Neeleman commutes to Azul’s Sao Paulo headquarters every week from his home in Connecticut, taking the 10-hour redeye on Sunday nights and returning on Thursdays.

“Where we normally are dealing with flooding for a few hours, we’re dealing with it in days here”. Deep moisture with heavy rain is flowing across the Carolinas. Meanwhile, President Obama declared a state of emergency in South Carolina Saturday afternoon. After it departed it should have changed course before Joaquin became a hurricane, she added.

South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley told drivers to stay off the roads and warned power outages were possible during the weekend.