US Suspends Search for El Faro Survivors

Capt. Mark Fedor, chief of response for the Coast Guard, said during a Wednesday afternoon news conference that the operation to locate the El Faro would switch from a rescue mission to a recovery and investigation footing at sunset.

At approximately 7:30 a.m. Thursday, the Coast Guard Atlantic Area command center in Portsmouth, Virginia, received an satellite call stating the El Faro was in the midst of the hurricane, had lost propulsion and was listing at 15 degrees.

“The captain and crew of the El Faro were Americans and Poles, men and women, experienced mariners and young seamen”, said Obama, as the Coast Guard released the names of the crew.

The U.S. Coast Guard called off its almost weeklong search for the missing crew of the container ship at sundown Wednesday. Additional items discovered included a partially submerged life raft, life jackets, life rings, cargo containers and an oil sheen. 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.

Fedor described the search effort to reporters, saying it involved hurricane hunter aircraft flying into the eye of the 140-mph storm at 10,000 feet last Thursday and Friday and planes battling 100-mph winds Saturday, pushing the aircraft “to the extent of their operating limits”.

The El Faro’s relationship to Washington dates back to 1991 when Seattle-based Saltchuk Resources bought it to service Alaska and renamed it the Northern Light. “I think they’re giving up too soon”.

Among the items investigators hope to recover is the ship’s voyage data recorder, which contains audio recordings from the bridge and basic navigational information like speed and direction and could be key to reconstructing the mysterious last 12 hours of the doomed ship. “I wish we did”, said Anthony Chiarello, Tote Inc’s president and CEO. “We have gotten a briefing from the Coast Guard”.

The National Transportation Safety Board launched a go-team to Jacksonville, Fla., to investigate the loss of the cargo ship El Faro, which was last heard from October 1, according to the NTSB website. She says they’re working with the Navy to bring out different equipment than what the Coast Guard was using- these will be more geared to finding the ship thousands of feet underwater instead of looking for survivors at sea level.

On Monday, a number of stores in the Virgin Islands said they have not been affected.

Five graduates of the Maine Maritime Academy also were lost.

“If they were able to abandon ship and put on their survival suits, they would have been abandoning ship into that Category 4 hurricane”. “Our objective is not only to find out what happened but why it happened”. He said there should be emails and other messages between the captain and the company to help answer the question.

The captain, who has 20 years’ experience on cargo ships, calmly told company officials the crew was removing the water.

In addition to the VDR the NTSB investigation will also look into the communications between the captain and the vessel’s owner.