After two weeks of hearings ,the U.S. investigators have gathered evidence and reports referring to El Faro’s tragedy which sank on October 1, 2015, after losing propulsion during Hurricane Joaquin. According to the USCG, it was the worst cargo shipping disaster investigation, involving a U.S.-flagged vessel in more than three decades.
The ship’s captain was told that intended to avoid a brewing storm in the Caribbean when he departed on a routine cargo run between Florida and Puerto Rico. All 33 crew onboard died when the 790-foot (241-meter) ship sank off the Bahamas during the hurricane, two days after leaving Jacksonville, Florida, before the storm intensified into a hurricane.
During the second set of hearings, the Coast Guard’s Marine Board of Investigation meeting proved that the ship had received outdated weather data as the storm intensified, due to delays from its weather reporting service. As a consequence, information was reaching the ship hours behind advisories coming from national storm forecasters.
However,the investigators did not appear to have found clear answers and a third set of hearings is going to be scheduled. Till then, it is expected to have evidence from the ship’s voyage data recorder, which may contain information from the ship’s final hours.
The recorder has been located in 15,000 feet (4,600 meters) of water off the Bahamas, however NTSB authorities have not scheduled a mission to retrieve it yet.