Welcome to Shipping Online!   [Sign In]
Back to Homepage
Already a Member? Sign In
News Content

NTSB: Retrieving El Faro's voyage data recorder could take months

THE US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) says it will likely be months before the voyage data recorder can be recovered from the sunken wreck El Faro, which sank October 1 some 40 miles northeast of the Bahamas during a hurricane, claiming the lives of 33.

The data recorder could contain important clues about what happened before the ship sank, including audio from the navigation bridge and information about the El Faro's speed and heading, reported the Virginian-Pilot. 



Searchers discovered the basketball-sized data recorder Tuesday in about 15,000 feet of water, more than six months after the 790-foot US-flagged ship sank on its way from Jacksonville to San Juan, Puerto Rico. 



The NTSB said in a statement that investigators who found the data recorder aren't able to retrieve it because they don't have the right equipment to do it aboard their research vessel Atlantis, which is owned by the US Navy and operated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. 



The data recorder is attached to a steel beam that's connected to the mast structure, which is resting about 1,500 feet from the rest of the El Faro.



"Now that we have been able to see just how the VDR is oriented relative to the mast structure, it's clear that we're going to need specialised deep-water salvage recovery equipment to bring it up," said NTSB official Brian Curtis. 



"Extracting a recorder capsule attached to a four-ton mast under 15,000 feet of water presents formidable challenges, but we're going to do everything that is technically feasible to get that recorder into our lab," he said. 



The NTSB and the US Coast Guard are investigating what happened with the US Coast Guard set to convene a second round of hearings May 16.
About Us| Service| Membership and Fee| AD Service| Help| Sitemap| Links| Contact Us| Terms of Use