USCG: Computer issues did not delay El Faro response

United States Coast Guard officials initially did not think the lost TOTE Maritime general cargo vessel was in danger of sinking, according to testimony from the Marine Board of Investigation hearing into the incident.    The United States Coast Guard did not believe the El Faro, the TOTE Maritime general cargo vessel that sank near Crooked Island, Bahamas Oct. 1, was in danger of sinking when it received the initial report from TOTE’s designated person ashore.
   The El Faro had, by that point, already lost propulsion and begun taking on water after sailing into the path of Hurricane Joaquin.
   According to testimony from the ongoing hearings into the incident being held by USCG’s Marine Board of Investigation in Jacksonville, Fla., the Coast Guard also suffered a software glitch during its initial response phase, but this did not delay search efforts.
   Based on early conversations between USCG and TOTE Maritime’s DPA, Capt. John Lawrence, the Coast Guard believed the ship was disabled, but that the crew would be able to pump out water coming into the El Faro and stabilize it, USCG Petty Officer 2nd Class Matthew Chancery said at the MBI hearing Wednesday.
   Those conversations, however, did not seem to line up with communications between El Faro Captain Michael Davidson and TOTE. Recordings of the initial distress call from Davidson played at the hearing indicated the ship’s captain was under severe stress, even telling an operator the “the clock is ticking on this.”
   Recordings of those calls and a call between Lawrence and Chancery were posted on the local Jacksonville radio station WOKV’s website.
   Chancery told Lawrence that the El Faro might be able to drop anchor to wait out the storm, despite the fact that the vessel was found 15,000 feet deep, well past the continental shelf.
   Upon hearing El Faro‘s distress signal for himself, Chancery said he became “very alarmed,” and after plotting the ship’s location and unsuccessfully attempting to raise Davidson on the vessel’s satellite phone, he knew the ship was in serious trouble.
   “I knew the general area was right in the middle of [Hurricane] Joaquin,” he told the MBI.
   Chancery said Coast Guard crews then went into distress mode, but were forced to revert to traditional search and rescue methods, including the use of paper charts, due to a glitch in their SAR-OPS system. SAR-OPS is a suite of software tools the Coast Guard uses to plan search and rescue missions.
   “In terms of response time, I don’t think the loss of this system would affect it at all,” Chancery said, because it was unlikely any USCG assets would have been able to reach the El Faro in the middle of the category 4 hurricane.
   The Coast Guard had no aircraft close enough to reach the El Faro in such dangerous conditions, and the closest cutter was hundreds of miles away, according to Chancery. It was not until the next day that the Coast Guard sent one aircraft to look for the vessel, and that plane was damaged due to high winds and turbulence.
   Previous testimony in the MBI hearing revealed that prior to its sinking, the El Faro was set to be added to a Coast Guard list of vessels identified as having the most “potential for risk,” which would have required more safety inspections.
   The USCG MBI hearing into the sinking of the El Faro, which claimed the lives of the ship’s 28-member crew and five additional maintenance workers, is scheduled to conclude today. TOTE officials and employees, along with vessel safety and maintenance experts and members of the Coast Guard have testified in an attempt to identify any potential illegal or otherwise negligent conduct in the incident.
   The Coast Guard plans to hold an additional hearing in the spring to look at the weather and other conditions surrounding the incident, after which it will issue a full report on its findings. The MBI has the authority to file civil charges against the parties involved, and will forward any evidence of criminal misconduct to the U.S. Department of Justice.