Authorities have hailed a ‘miracle’ after all 180 passengers and crew on a tanker and river cruise boat were accounted for following a collision that left the pleasure vessel on its side.
An investigation has been opened after the Atlantic Asphalt tanker struck a parked American Heritage cruise in the Mississippi River at the port of New Orleans.
Experts say it is too soon to determine what caused the incident, but early evidence points to a catastrophic system failure onboard the tanker.
New Orleans mayor Helena Moreno told a news conference that 32 cruise passengers had been taken to hospital, none of whom were thought to have critical injuries.
‘We have zero people unaccounted for, which truly is a miracle on the Mississippi,’ she said.
She said a roll call conducted by American Cruise Lines in a nearby auditoriumaccounted for everyone not being treated in hospital.
Witnesses described seeing the tanker spinning out of control.
Port worker Devon Flanagan was left his truck as he saw passengers in the water, having escaped from the cruise, which had tipped onto its side.
‘It was just chaos,’ he recalled. ‘You had all types of ships, like other barges and other companies down there trying to help out, which also was a little convoluted because you had people still in the water.’
Coast guards closed a section of the Mississippi River to boat traffic as they conducted the rescue operation.
Martin Davies, a maritime law expert at Tulane University, said the tanker was sailing slowly upriver and against the current and had already safely cleared a difficult turn at Algiers Point.
‘For something like this to happen for an upbound ship indicates that something must have gone really badly wrong’, he said.
Mr Davies added that local pilots are used to provide guidance onboard vessels given their extensive knowledge of the waters.
The American Heritage cruise was at the end of an eight-day excursion of destinations in Louisiana and Mississippi.
According to the National Maritime Organisation, the tanker is owned by Nave Shipping SA, a company registered in Monrovia, Liberia.
This is a subsidiary of Chinese state firm China State Shipbuilding Corporation, which accounted for nearly a quarter of the gloabl shipbuilding market in 2022.
The Atlantic Asphalt vessel specialises in transporting large volumes of asphalt and bitumen, a semi-solid material used for roofing and in road construction.
An inquiry has been opened into the crash, but investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) were delayed arriving at the scene after air travel was suspended across the US for five hours on Friday afternoon.
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