Hours after a tanker lost steering in New Orleans and crashed into a docked river cruise ship, the city’s port filed a lawsuit seeking to ensure federal investigators could take control of the vessel, which is owned by a subsidiary of a Chinese company.
All 197 passengers and crew members aboard the American Heritage survived Friday’s collision, as did the tanker’s crew.
Officials said 32 people were taken to hospitals, including two police officers who were thrown into the Mississippi River when the cruise ship rolled. None of the injuries was considered critical, although eight people remained hospitalized Saturday.
Lawsuit prompts warrant for control of tanker
The Board of Commissioners of the Port of New Orleans said in its lawsuit that the Atlantic Asphalt caused at least $1 million in damage to the port terminal. A judge issued a warrant Friday that temporarily placed the ship under federal control.
The tanker has since been towed from the crash site, but removing the cruise ship could take weeks. The American Heritage remains on its side, pressed against a Mississippi River terminal, Coast Guard Capt. Melanie Burnham told reporters Saturday.
The immediate priority is safely removing the 16,000 gallons (60,500 liters) of fuel aboard the cruise ship, Burnham said.
Marine traffic on the Mississippi River has been restricted, though Burnham said vessels should soon be able to travel both upstream and downstream.
The tanker apparently lost steering before the crash, but investigators have not determined what caused the failure, Burnham said. The National Transportation Safety Board was dispatching a team to New Orleans.
Passenger describes frightening moments in the river
Passengers aboard the American Heritage first realized something was wrong when the tanker sounded its horn repeatedly as it drifted toward the cruise ship, passenger Joe Knab told WDSU-TV.
The impact was powerful, and the ship began to tilt almost immediately. Crew members moved everyone to the third deck, where they handed out life jackets and prepared passengers to evacuate. But the vessel suddenly rolled, throwing Knab and roughly 100 other passengers and crew into the muddy Mississippi River, where the water temperature was 66 degrees Fahrenheit (19 degrees Celsius).
Tugboat crews, other cruise ship captains, workers in the area, police officers and additional rescuers quickly joined the response.
“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 station. He was still wearing the jeans he had on aboard the ship, though they were covered in mud.
Knab estimated that he spent about 15 minutes in the water. He joked that his two decades in the Navy probably helped him stay calm.
“They taught us not to drown,” Knab said.
Knab was wearing a shirt provided by a Hilton hotel where passengers assembled after the crash. Nearly all of his other belongings were lost in the river, although his cellphone somehow continued working. He hoped to catch a flight home to Wichita, Kansas, but was unsure how Friday’s nationwide ground stop would create another obstacle.
New Orleans Harbor Police Chief Melanie Montroll said having passengers put on life jackets while waiting to leave the ship likely prevented additional deaths when the vessel suddenly rolled into the river.
“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 had been completing an eight-day cruise that included stops at several destinations along the Mississippi River.
Tanker owned by Chinese state-owned company subsidiary
The Atlantic Asphalt is a 520-foot (160-meter) tanker that was headed for New Orleans, according to MarineTraffic. The vessel was sailing under the flag of the Marshall Islands.
International Maritime Organization records identify Nave Shipping SA, a company registered in Monrovia, Liberia, as the ship’s owner. Nave Shipping was named as one of the defendants in Friday’s lawsuit.
MarineTraffic, a live shipping-tracking service, identifies Nave Shipping as a subsidiary of China State Shipbuilding Corporation, a large Chinese state-owned conglomerate.
China State Shipbuilding Corp. did not respond to an emailed request for comment.
The tanker is designed to transport large loads of asphalt and bitumen, a semi-solid material commonly used in road construction and roofing, according to MarineTraffic.
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