33 souls on cargo ship missing in Hurricane Joaquin, October 2015

drjones said:

they may have attached a buoy/locator to it, but if you listen to the press conference they are looking for survivors. recovering a body is time consuming and has a heightened risk, they would not prioritize that over continuing to search for survivors.

Click to expand...

I totally understand the need to search for (and, hopefully, find) survivors. But, if my loved one was on the boat and they left a body that might be him/her I would be inconsolable and angry.

drjones said:

the lifeboat.

https://youtu.be/U_0gpLoaDVk

Click to expand...

I know looks can be deceiving but that life boat looks like it is big.
I hope the other one has survivors in it and they find it soon.

watcher9 said:

I know looks can be deceiving but that life boat looks like it is big.
I hope the other one has survivors in it and they find it soon.

Click to expand...

It's awfully small when it's in the ocean during a hurricane.

So sad ! Sympathies and prayers going out to the families.

From drjones link -- very disheartening to see the battered life boat.

Does anyone know what the El Faro was hauling ? I was curious if it was anything explosive, since it looked like that life boat was blown apart.
Maybe high winds could do just as much damage, though.
Just thinking out loud.

it is likely the waves did the damage, although you cant rule out that it might have also happened when the boat sank if you had shipping containers being tossed around.

drjones said:

the lifeboat.

https://youtu.be/U_0gpLoaDVk

Click to expand...

This is so tragic. :cry:

I can imagine the fear in the sailors. Even the most hardened sailors getting seasick.

drjones said:

unless there is news i have not seen - there should still be one lifeboat unaccounted for and i have not heard anyone say that they found all of the survival suits.

that said, it is still highly unlikely that anyone survived for long after the ship went down in those seas.

Click to expand...

I doubt that they had a lot of extra survival suits. I would guess they had just enough for the crew and maybe a few extras. So every suit they find is one crew member who is not in it. The other life boat could hold the entire crew, but judging from the damage to this life boat, it doesn't look to me like they had a chance to abandon ship.

If the ship just sank, they could have radioed a mayday, and launched the life boats. But the damage to the life boat, and empty survival suits makes me think that didn't happen.

kaen said:

I totally understand the need to search for (and, hopefully, find) survivors. But, if my loved one was on the boat and they left a body that might be him/her I would be inconsolable and angry.

Click to expand...

Exactly what I was thinking. I mean they went in the water, and recovered a life ring. Then they went in the water to check on a body, but they didn't recover that. It just doesn't make any sense. Is recovering a life ring more important then recovering a body?:thinking:

LietKynes said:

So sad ! Sympathies and prayers going out to the families.

From drjones link -- very disheartening to see the battered life boat.

Does anyone know what the El Faro was hauling ? I was curious if it was anything explosive, since it looked like that life boat was blown apart.
Maybe high winds could do just as much damage, though.
Just thinking out loud.

Click to expand...

It was carrying standard cargo – grocery, cars, retail products. I'm not sure what if anything could cause an explosion big enough to do that.

http://elfaroincident.com/resources/faqs/

drjones said:

the lifeboat.

https://youtu.be/U_0gpLoaDVk

Click to expand...

Catching up and read back through all the posts.

Some good points made and I realize it is very slim odds at this point. I am just hoping still for a miracle that at least a few have made it but they would need to be found very quickly at this point.

The damage to that life boat I suspect was caused by a container ramming into it. It shows the force of what the violent waves were doing to the ship.

What is amazing to me is to watch the diver in the water behind the life boat. It is toward the middle of the video and to watch how the diver gets tossed around in the waves is very telling to me. These are calm waters now and to see how the diver still gets tossed around in the waves tells us how bad it would be in the storm. When waves are 30 feet high or more then I think what happens is you would get dunked under water no matter how hard you try to stay afloat. The violent waves would make it very difficult to be able to stay on top of the water unless you somehow managed to get in one of the lifeboats.

I had read quite a few survivor stories in the ocean so it is possible although this hurricane was very bad.

One survivor story the guy described how he would be dunked by the waves going over his head and he had to hold his breath until he got above water again. I think this hurricane made it extremely difficult to stay on top of water.

Im praying for a miracle but it will have to come quickly now.
This is truly tragic.

Maybe this tragedy will force shipping companies to avoid storms in the future that can turn into worse storms. Just hope something positive can be done to avoid future tragedies.

Prayers for the friends and families of those on board.

Oct 6 2015, 1:00 pm ET

El Faro Ship: Who Are the Americans On Board?

by Erik Ortiz

Some had a taste for adventure. Others wanted to test their courage. And while the 28 Americans aboard the El Faro container ship are a dedicated and diverse crew, one thread seems to run through each of their lives — a love for the sea.

The ship's owner has not released a list of all 33 crew members, including five Polish nationals, who were lost when the vessel presumably sank Oct. 1 — just as Hurricane Joaquin thrashed the waters off the coast of the Bahamas.

So far, only one body has been recovered in the search. But family members have been holding out hope that the others are alive — and they're sharing stories of their loved ones...

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/el-faro-ship-who-are-americans-board-n439341

Recovering a life ring takes an additional 3 seconds to put your arm thru it as you are about to be hauled up, recovering a human body involves a lot more time and additional risk than that.

This should not be taken as a commentary on the relative value of a life ring vs a deceased person. I trust the Coast Guard to make these decisions when they are out there risking their lives to save others.

www.cnn.com/2015/10/05/us/el-faro-missing-ship-hurricane-joaquin/

www.nytimes.com/2015/10/06/us/el-faro-missing-ship-hurricane-joaquin.html?_r=0
“That’s what I did not like! That makes no sense to me at all,” she said firmly. Mr. Hamm, 49, a married father of four, has worked at sea since 1999 and is a hard worker who invites homeless people to spend the night at his home and eat Thanksgiving dinner, she said.

www.thetakeaway.org/story/how-americas-ship-laws-are-blame-el-faros-sinking/
El Faro was built a year before that incident, in 1975, making it a 40-year-old ship—far older than similar ships in other countries, which are usually scrapped before 25 years. El Faro's loss raises questions whether current American ship-building regulations are outdated, and may be partly to blame for the ship's engine failure during Hurricane Joaquin.


Couldn't find any more updates on the search for survivors.
I'd love it if there were a miracle soon !
I can't imagine what the families are going through .

kaen said:

I totally understand the need to search for (and, hopefully, find) survivors. But, if my loved one was on the boat and they left a body that might be him/her I would be inconsolable and angry.

Click to expand...

Not if you grew up around the sea and you knew your relatives worked on the sea. It's expected that if you die, you die there and are never recovered.

This NYT article reports on the growing questions about the safety on the ship and the decision to continue heading into the hurricane's path when other ships were trying to avoid it.

Questions Are Raised About Safety on Ship Missing After Storm

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/07/us/questions-are-raised-about-safety-on-ship-missing-after-storm.html?_r=0

Two seamen who recently served on El Faro said the ship experienced safety problems while they worked onboard, ranging from faulty devices used to lower the lifeboats to rooms that filled easily with water when it rained. The 790-foot El Faro lost communication with the Coast Guard on Thursday morning after reporting that it had taken on water and lost engine power.

Kurt Bruer, a quartermaster who worked this year on El Faro, said he remembered drills that dragged on as workers tried to fix davits used to lower lifeboats.

“I felt unsafe,” Mr. Bruer said. “I saw firsthand, the davits don’t work properly. It would take 30 minutes to complete a drill. Half the time we had trouble raising and lowering the lifeboats. It shouldn’t take more than five minutes.”

Click to expand...

The former quartermaster also said the ship kept all the "Gumby" suits in one room, when they're normally kept in each person's room so they can be accessed quickly. He also said it was likely the captain didn't chart a course away from the hurricane because the ship was typically in a hurry to avoid penalties for late delivery of freight.

I also heard on the news tonight that the captain had reported his engines were dead. That's really bad news in a storm.

drjones said:

Recovering a life ring takes an additional 3 seconds to put your arm thru it as you are about to be hauled up, recovering a human body involves a lot more time and additional risk than that.

This should not be taken as a commentary on the relative value of a life ring vs a deceased person. I trust the Coast Guard to make these decisions when they are out there risking their lives to save others.

Click to expand...

It doesn't look as if they are going to find anyone alive. They might as well have recovered a body.

Hiandmighty said:

Not if you grew up around the sea and you knew your relatives worked on the sea. It's expected that if you die, you die there and are never recovered.

Click to expand...

Do you have a source to back that up? I have never heard of such a thing. Italy just spend two months to recover the bodies of 800 refugees from a shipwreck, and returned them to their families. You are telling me that Italy will recover the bodies of 800 refugees, but the US government will not even pull the bodies of dead American citizens out of the ocean? I have to see a reliable source, before I will believe that.

Investigators try to retrieve ship data recorder

JACKSONVILLE, FLA. — The latest on a U.S.-based cargo ship that sank in the Atlantic and the search for crew members. All times local:

8:15 a.m.

The National Transportation Safety Board says it will try to retrieve the data recorder from 15,000 feet deep to learn why a cargo ship sank near the Bahamas during Hurricane Joaquin.

Read more here: http://www.sunherald.com/2015/10/07/6453123_the-latest-investigators-try-to.html?rh=1#storylink=cpy

jjenny said:

It doesn't look as if they are going to find anyone alive. They might as well have recovered a body.

Click to expand...

I don't quite understand that decision either. The Coast Guard is very good at plucking people from the water with those cables and harnesses. Surely they know that families would really appreciate a proper buriel if they find anyone so I do question this particular decision.

At a minimum they should have marked the body with a GPS locator and retrieve it later. Maybe they did that. So long as they did that then I am ok with that. If they just left without placing a GPS locator on the body then I am very disappointed.