Search for El Faro Crew Continues

The U.S. Coast Guard isn’t optimistic that a container ship reported missing last week after running afoul of Hurricane Joaquin will be found intact, but hope remains that survivors can be located.

After announcing the belief on Monday that the El Faro likely sunk, the Coast Guard has continued efforts to search for any survivors. The 735-foot container ship was headed to San Juan, Puerto Rico, from Jacksonville when it became caught in the fury of Hurricane Joaquin near Crooked Islands in the Bahamas, the U.S. Coast Guard reported. Watchstanders at the Coast Guard’s Atlantic Area command center in Portsmouth, Va., received the ship’s distress call around 7:30 a.m. Thursday. At that time, crew members said the ship had lost propulsion and had a 15-degree list.

“The crew reported the ship had previously taken on water, but that all flooding had been contained,” the Coast Guard wrote in a media release.

The El Faro had 33 crewmembers on board. Twenty-eight crewmembers are from America and five are from Poland, the Coast Guard said.

As of Monday night, Coast Guard crews from Clearwater, St. Petersburg, Key West and Virginia had searched more than 160,574 square nautical miles with assistance from the Navy and Air Force. The body of a person in a survival suit has been recovered, the guard reported. It was found in the vicinity of the ship’s last known position near Crooked Islands. Rescuers have also found life jackets, a partially submerged life raft, cargo containers and other items in the search area.

Coast Guard search crews took off again at first light Tuesday morning to look for survivors. Noting that it had been nearly 120 hours since the last contact with the ship, the guard tweeted that “finding survivors (is the) top priority.”

Photos courtesy of the U.S. Coast Guard