Skip to footer

Hurricane Joaquin update: Coast Guard resumes search for missing cargo ship

The hunt continues for the crew of a Florida-based cargo ship caught in Hurricane Joaquin.

|
Tote Maritime Services/Reuters
The El Faro is shown in this undated handout photo provided by Tote Maritime in Jacksonville, Florida, October 2, 2015. The US Coast Guard said Friday it was searching for the 735-foot cargo ship with 33 crew members aboard reported to be caught in the powerful hurricane Joaquin. The container ship El Faro was en route to San Juan, Puerto Rico from Jacksonville, Florida when the Coast Guard received a satellite notification that the ship had lost propulsion and was listing heavily.

The hunt continues for a cargo ship that went missing off the coast of the Bahamas during Hurricane Joaquin. The Coast Guard is making every attempt to rescue the crew, of whom 28 are Americans and 5 are Polish.

"The fact that there has been no communications [with the ship] is not good news," Chris Lloyd, the operations manager of the Bahamas Air Sea and Rescue Association (BASRA), told the Associated Press. The BASRA is not taking part in looking for the ship because the area of the Atlantic Ocean in question is beyond its reach.

Heavy rain and winds could have damaged or destroyed the ship’s communications equipment, say Coast Guard officials.

El Faro, owned by a Florida-based company, departed Jacksonville, Fla. late Tuesday night and was scheduled to arrive in San Juan, Puerto Rico, at about noon on Friday. 

The ship encountered hurricane Joaquin north of San Salvador. Its last communication was a distress call, issued about 7:30 Thursday morning, saying it had lost power and was taking on water. 

The search is complicated by the ship's last known location, say Coast Guard officials. El Faro was far from land, in an area with very few other vessels. They have already searched 850 square miles for the ship, working with El Faro’s parent company Tote Maritime Services to try and re-establish communications with the ship.

The ship still has a chance of recovery, says the Coast Guard.

On Thursday, the Coast Guard rescued 12 crew members from a sinking vessel that had been caught in the hurricane. That vessel, whose port of call was originally Bolivia, had all of its crew members accounted for. Other, smaller, ships that went missing in the stormy weather have also been found.

The Bahamas were battered by hurricane Joaquin, with school closings and severe property damage across the islands, but no reported casualties. While the hurricane is no longer expected to make landfall in the US, it has unleashed torrential rains and prompted flash flood warnings from South Carolina to Maryland. 

"Hopefully, today [the searchers] will have a bit better vision as the hurricane heads north," Petty Officer John-Paul Rios, a Coast Guard spokesman in Miami, told the Associated Press.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Hurricane Joaquin update: Coast Guard resumes search for missing cargo ship
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/USA-Update/2015/1003/Hurricane-Joaquin-update-Coast-Guard-resumes-search-for-missing-cargo-ship
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe