NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A tanker in New Orleans that apparently lost its steering slammed into a docked river cruise boat with 180 people aboard Friday, the mayor said. All aboard survived after the crash prompted a massive rescue operation for passengers and crew who plunged into the Mississippi River as the ship took on water and began to topple over.
Video from the scene showed the much larger Atlantic Asphalt tanker hit the American Heritage cruise boat while it was docked as metal and glass crashed and crunched.
Tugboat operators, nearby workers, police and other rescuers rushed to help.
“We have zero people unaccounted for, which truly is a miracle on the Mississippi,” New Orleans Mayor Helena Moreno said at a news conference as rescuers and others cheered.
The mayor said 32 people were taken to the hospital, but none of them had critical injuries.
The boat started listing within minutes and flipped while emergency workers were still trying to get everyone off the ship.
Dozens of people on board and at least two police officers were dragged from the 66-degree Fahrenheit (19-degree Celsius) river onto nearby ships.
Devon Flanagan was at his job nearby at the Port of New Orleans when workers rushed down the dock. He got out of his truck and saw the ship on its side and passengers in the water.
“It was just chaos,” he said. “You had all types of ships, like other barges and other companies down there trying to help out, which also was a little convoluted because you had people still in the water.”
It appeared the tanker seemed to have “some type of loss of steering,” but the exact cause of the crash was unknown, Coast Guard Captain Melanie Burnham said.
The National Transportation Safety Board planned to investigate the crash, but members were initially unable to make it to New Orleans because all flights nationwide were grounded due to communications problems at regional air traffic control centres.
The people who weren’t injured were brought to a nearby auditorium, and cruise officials did a roll call to make sure everyone was accounted for, Moreno said.
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