In a decision that could mean broad changes across the American shipping industry, the commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard has accepted, partially or in full, almost all the recommendations made by a Coast Guard panel that investigated the 2015 sinking of the SS El Faro. Thirty-three people died on the cargo ship in the worst American sea disaster in more than three decades.
Admiral Paul Zukunft used the opportunity to lay out a series of industry reforms, including some the Coast Guard has sought for decades, such as phasing out old-fashioned open lifeboats and giving Coast Guard safety inspectors more oversight of their private counterparts.
The admiral said in his memo accepting the investigators’ findings that, “While many factors contributed to this marine casualty, by far the most prominent” was the decision of the late Capt. Michael Davidson “to sail the ship in close proximity to a Category 3 hurricane”.
Read more: Captain, Regulators Blamed For The Sinking Of El Faro During Hurricane Joaquin In 2015
Although Hurricane Joaquin’s path and intensity were notoriously erratic, making it hard for the National Hurricane Center to forecast, Admiral Zukunft said the captain had enough information to avoid the storm as he sailed from the ship’s home port of Jacksonville to San Juan, Puerto Rico. Most notably, the ship’s two navigators asked the captain several times to change course to veer away from Joaquin. Instead, he sailed the ship directly into the hurricane’s most dangerous quadrant, where it took on water, lost propulsion, and finally sank.
The captain left the bridge for eight hours as the El Faro sailed into the storm, despite receiving a series of phone calls from the worried officers standing watch. “If the master had survived, we would have pursued a negligence complaint against his merchant marine credential," said the lead Coast Guard investigator, Capt. Jason Neubauer, when he released his report in October.
Although the report finds that responsibility for the accident is shared among a number of parties, the El Faro and her crew were lost on our watch. For this, we will be eternally sorry - Darrell Wilson
But the Coast Guard commandant also cited “numerous failures” on the part of the ship’s operator, TOTE Services, Inc. In unusually harsh language, he said that TOTE “deliberately abandoned the practice of assisting [captains] with heavy weather voyage planning, storm system monitoring and avoidance”.
In a statement on Thursday, Darrell Wilson, a spokesperson for TOTE, said, “Although the report finds that responsibility for the accident is shared among a number of parties, the El Faro and her crew were lost on our watch. For this, we will be eternally sorry.”
Admiral Zukunft also accepted the Coast Guard investigators’ recommendation that TOTE be sanctioned for four lesser safety violations. Capt. Neubauer estimated previously that TOTE’s fines would be assessed at around $80,000. TOTE has already paid millions in settlements to the families of all 33 crew members.
"I firmly believe that the single greatest failing in this case was NOT the sinking of the ship itself, but the fact that no one survived. Ships sink all the time. What is unusual is for a ship to sink and for all hands to be lost"- Rod Sullivan
In his memo, Admiral Zukunft agreed “with the intent” of the Coast Guard investigators’ recommendation that the old-fashioned open lifeboats carried on the El Faro should no longer be used. In its separate findings last week, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said some members of the crew might have been able to survive the sinking if the ship had carried modern enclosed lifeboats. On Thursday, Admiral Zukunft requested input from ship owners and operators, as well as legislation, to phase out the open boats, which the NTSB says are still used on many commercial vessels.
Jacksonville maritime attorney Rod Sullivan, who represented the family of crew member Sylvester Crawford Jr., criticized the Coast Guard for not requiring that modern lifeboats be installed on all existing commercial vessels. He said in an email, “I firmly believe that the single greatest failing in this case was NOT the sinking of the ship itself, but the fact that no one survived. Ships sink all the time. What is unusual is for a ship to sink and for all hands to be lost.”
Many of the recommendations the Coast Guard accepted on Thursday involve modern technology, such as personal locator beacons incorporated into flotation devices, closed-circuit cameras to monitor cargo holds and flood alarms at various points where water could enter a ship.
A number of the recommendations would institute tighter oversight of private inspectors by the Coast Guard. Currently private companies carry out most of the inspections of American commercial vessels. The new recommendations would involve the Coast Guard more closely at many levels, from the training process to publicly identifying errors made by private inspection companies.
Admiral Zukunft also accepted recommendations critical of the Coast Guard itself, calling for better safety training for officers and more transparency about problems found on individual ships.
The commandant also said he would study the way the Coast Guard decides whether conversions of ships should be considered major. A determination that a ship is major means that the Coast Guard effectively considers it a new ship. Among other things, safety systems must be brought up to date with the most modern standards and the vessel’s stability must be recalculated. The El Faro, which was 40 years old, had gone through a number of conversions, including being cut in half and lengthened with a new midsection.
A more recent conversion involved removing a partial top deck. The Coast Guard had initially ruled this a major conversion, but TOTE successfully appealed that decision. This ruling allowed the El Faro to keep using its old open lifeboats that are otherwise illegal. Even more significantly, its stability was not recalculated. A study commissioned by the Coast Guard inspectors concluded that the reconfigured El Faro did not meet current stability standards on its accident voyage.
The National Transportation Safety Board’s findings about the sinking released last week listed the Coast Guard’s decision to agree reverse its major conversion ruling among the factors leading to the sinking.
The Coast Guard can implement some of its recommendations immediately. But others will require the approval of international safety organizations and some will take federal legislation. Most of the El Faro’s crew members were from Florida and both U.S. senators, Bill Nelson and Marco Rubio, have taken a keen interest in the investigation. Sen. Nelson told Jacksonville’s public radio station WJCT-FM previously that he intends to call for hearings into the sinking.
The NTSB’s final report on the sinking is expected to be released next month.
