Maine Maritime Academy flies flag at half-staff to honor El Faro crew

The U.S. Coast Guard says they are no longer searching for the ship as it is believed to be at the bottom of the sea.

Sadly, one body from the El Faro sea disaster has been found with the U.S. Coast Guard noting that the deceased individual was found inside of their survival suits.

The Coast Guard called off the search on Wednesday.

“Today, 28 American families – from Florida to Maine – and five Polish families are heartbroken”.

Search and rescue crews working since last week were due to stop their efforts at sunset on Wednesday, Coast Guard Captain Mark Fedor said. “They did all they could”.

Even before the announcement, hopes of finding anyone alive were fading.

The ship went missing near the Bahamas after it set out from Jacksonville, Fla., on Thursday. And there’s no questioning the outcome of that. Coast Guard records show it underwent its last inspection in March. “I don’t think they have a choice”, said Mary Shevory of Brockton, Massachusetts.

Our focus has been on supporting and caring for the family members, loved ones, and friends of those aboard the El Faro. The investigators’ work now includes scheduling and conducting interviews with crew members of the sister ship El Yunque, engineering groups, the TOTE designated person ashore who last had communication with the vessel, and any of the EL Faro’s offshore crew, among others.

It is not clear why the captain chose to lead the ship into waters near Hurricane Joaquin. While different engineering and safety sub-groups conduct interviews and review the El Faro’s systems, the NTSB is coordinating with the Navy to bring in the proper equipment to locate the sunken vessel and its voyage data recorder.

The data recorder is created to send out auditory pings for roughly 30 days after it hits the water. Did pressure to deliver the cargo on time play a role in the captain and company’s decision to press ahead? Investigators will also try to determine if the ship lost power and was unable to move away from the hurricane.

Fedor, who was joined by National Transportation Safety Board Vice-Chairman Bella Dinh Zarr, stressed that his team from the southeastern division of the United States Coast Guard “did all they could” to locate the 33 members of the sunken tanker ship during a search mission that encompassed 172,000 nautical miles. We’re told that determination could take about a year.

The ship left Jacksonville on September 29 while Joaquin was still a tropical storm.

Joaquin quickly developed from a tropical storm to a powerful hurricane, but Tote officials say the captain, Michael Davidson, had an acceptable plan to bypass the storm had the ship not lost power.

The NTSB expects that investigation to take at least a week. “Our prayers and thoughts go out to the family members and we will continue to offer support during this hard time”, read the statement. It was to transfer its routes from the Caribbean to the U.S. West Coast and Alaska in the coming months.