NTSB releases final report on El Faro investigation

The National Transportation Safety Board last week released its final report on the investigation of the El Faro, a cargo ship that sank in October 2015 during Hurricane Joaquin while en route from Jacksonville, Fla. to San Juan, Puerto Rico.

   The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has released its final report on the investigation of the sinking of the cargo ship El Faro.
   The 790-foot ship sank Oct. 1, 2015 off the Bahamas during Hurricane Joaquin, taking the lives of all 33 aboard while en route from Jacksonville, Fla. to San Juan, Puerto Rico.
   After a public meeting in December, the NTSB said that the sinking “was caused by a captain’s failure to avoid sailing into a hurricane, despite numerous opportunities to route a course away from hazardous weather.”
   The NTSB also said the poor oversight and inadequate safety management system of the ship’s operator, TOTE, contributed to the sinking.
   “Although El Faro and its crew should never have found themselves in such treacherous weather, that ship was not destined to sink,” said NTSB Chairman Robert L. Sumwalt in December. “If the crew had more information about the status of the hatches, how to best manage the flooding situation, and the ship’s vulnerabilities when in a sustained list, the accident might have been prevented.”
   The NTSB had released an executive summary of its findings in December, and last week released the full accident report.
   The NTSB said that as a result of its 26-month long investigation, it had made 29 recommendations to the U.S. Coast Guard, two to the Federal Communications Commission, one to the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration, nine to the International Association of Classification Societies, one to the American Bureau of Shipping, one to Furuno Electric Company and ten to TOTE Services.
   In a statement in December, TOTE said it would “carefully study the final Coast Guard and NTSB reports of investigation once they are formally issued. We as a company intend to learn everything possible from this accident and the resulting investigations to prevent anything similar from occurring in the future.”