President Obama Says Families of Crew on Missing Cargo Ship ‘Deserve Answers’

The US National Transportation Safety Board has launched an investigation into the incident and officials have said a probe may take months to complete.

The crew of El Faro has been missing since radio communications between the ship’s captain and owner, TOTE Maritime Puerto Rico, were disrupted. The Coast Guard later concluded it must have sank as it was beset by Hurricane Joaquin.

The safety investigation began as the Coast Guard continues to search for any of the 33 onboard that may have survived when container ship El Faro became disabled in the storm.

Coast Guard Capt. Mark Fedor spoke Wednesday also, calling the sundown cessation of search efforts “painful”.

The odds of survival after four or five days in the water are greatly reduced, even though the crew on the El Faro were capable mariners, Somma said.

“I have come to a very hard decision to suspend the search for the crew of the El Faro at sunset tonight”, Rear Adm. Scott Buschman of the Coast Guard’s 7th District said in a statement.

The search, which included Coast Guard and Navy aircraft, covered more than 183,000 square nautical miles, the Coast Guard said.

Robert Green, father of LaShawn Rivera, held out hope despite the Coast Guard decision: “Miracles do happen, and it’s God’s way only”. “I hope the families can take a few small measure of peace from that”. Bella Dinh-Zarr, the panel’s vice chairman, told a news conference in Jacksonville that investigators had interviewed the master of El Yunque, El Faro’s sister ship, along with port and other officials, and the Navy would search for the sunken ship.

The model of the data recorder on the El Faro is not the most sophisticated on the market, but would still likely provide the ship’s last known position, speed and heading, as well as audio recordings from the bridge and from radio traffic.

Given the weather system, the captain’s “plan was a sound plan that would have enabled him to clearly pass around the storm with a margin of comfort that was adequate in his professional opinion”, Greene said.

Tote Maritime, said two vessels it dispatched to the scene had found a container “which appears to be from the El Faro”.

Another outstanding question is whether the five workers whose job was to prepare the engine room for a retrofitting had any role in the boat’s loss of power, which set the vessel adrift in the stormy seas.

The NTSB said a key part of the probe is to learn how to prevent such tragedies. He gave no details on the nature of their work.

The El Faro, a 790-foot cargo ship, was en route to San Juan, Puerto Rico, from Jacksonville, Florida, when it reported a few challenges.

“We were also searching for members of the extended Coast Guard family”.

He says he believes federal investigators will ask the ship owners if they pressured the captain to sail near a unsafe storm.

Regardless of any guidelines, “the most important thing is the captain’s experience, the seaworthiness of the ship, and the experience of the crew”, he said. He said there should be emails and other messages between the captain and the company to help answer the question.