Just hours after a tanker in New Orleans lost its steering and slammed into a docked river cruise boat, the city’s port sued to make sure federal investigators can seize the vessel owned by a subsidiary of a Chinese company.
All 197 passengers and crew members on the American Heritage cruise ship survived Friday as well as the crew on the tanker.
Officials said 32 people were brought to the hospital, including two police officers thrown into the Mississippi River when the boat rolled. None of the injuries were critical, though eight people remained hospitalized Saturday.
Moving cruise boat may take weeks
The lawsuit, filed by the Board of Commissioners of the Port of New Orleans, said the Atlantic Asphalt tanker caused at least $1 million in damage to its terminal. A judge issued a warrant Friday giving federal officials control of the ship for now.
The tanker has been towed away from the site, but it could take weeks to move the cruise boat, which remains turned on its side against a terminal on the Mississippi River, Coast Guard Capt. Melanie Burnham told reporters Saturday.
The first step is to make sure the 16,000 gallons of fuel on the boat are removed safely, she said.
Traffic has been limited on the Mississippi River, but Burnham said boats should be able to move both upstream and downstream soon.
The tanker appeared to lose steering, but the exact cause of the crash is not known, Burnham said. The National Transportation Safety Board was sending investigators to New Orleans.
Life vests may have saved lives
The first warning people on board the American Heritage had was the tanker blasting its horn several times as it floated toward the cruise ship, passenger Joe Knab told WDSU-TV.
The hit was hard, and the ship immediately started leaning. The crew gathered everyone on the third deck to put on life vests and start getting them off the boat, but it suddenly rolled and sent Knab and about 100 other passengers and crew members into the muddy, 66-degree waters of the Mississippi.
Tugboat operators, other cruise ship captains, nearby workers, police and other rescuers rushed to help.
“It’s fine now, but it was a little scary there at the time. I thought I was drowning because I kept bobbing underneath — and the water doesn’t taste very good,” Knab told the television station, still in the jeans he was wearing on the boat, now covered in mud.
Knab said he thinks he was in the water about 15 minutes. He laughed and said his 20 years in the Navy probably helped him.
“They taught us not to drown,” Knab said.
Knab was wearing a shirt from a Hilton hotel where the passengers gathered. The rest of his belongings were in the river. Somehow his cellphone still worked. He hoped to get on a plane soon back to Wichita, Kan., but he was not sure whether Friday’s nationwide ground stop was going to throw another problem at him.
Putting the life vests on the passengers as they waited to get off the boat probably saved a number of lives when the boat suddenly turned into the water, New Orleans Harbor Police Chief Melanie Montroll said.
“Whether it’s 10 feet of water or 200 feet, having those vests, having that population put those vests on and kind of float upriver while we retrieve them — I think was the best factor of success,” Montroll said.
The American Heritage was finishing an eight-day cruise to several Mississippi River destinations.
Tanker owner
The Atlantic Asphalt is a 520-foot-long vessel. It had a final destination in New Orleans, according to the live shipping tracker MarineTraffic, and was sailing under a flag for the Marshall Islands.
The ship is owned by Nave Shipping, a company registered in Monrovia, Liberia, according to the International Maritime Organization. It was one of the defendants in the lawsuit filed Friday.
Nave Shipping is a subsidiary of the China State Shipbuilding Corp., a sprawling Chinese state-owned conglomerate, according to MarineTraffic.
China State Shipbuilding Corp. didn’t respond to an emailed request for comment.
The tanker involved in the crash specializes in carrying large quantities of asphalt and bitumen, a semi-solid substance that is often used for road construction and roofing, according to MarineTraffic.
Collins writes for the Associated Press.
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