New Orleans Mayor Helena Moreno said all 180 passengers and crew on the American Heritage survived after it was hit by a tanker on the Mississippi River, with 32 people taken to hospital and none reported critically injured.
The Story
A tanker hit a docked river cruise boat in New Orleans on Friday, toppling the American Heritage and triggering a large-scale rescue after people were pulled into the water, the city said.
Mayor Helena Moreno said there were 180 people aboard, and that all of them survived the crash. She told reporters at a news conference that there were “zero people unaccounted for.”
Moreno said 32 people were taken to hospital, and none of the injured were reported to have critical injuries. She said many of the passengers and crew lost items such as IDs and car keys, and some also lost access to chargers and phones needed to contact family members.
The cruise boat began listing within minutes of the impact, and it flipped while emergency workers were still trying to get everyone off. Dozens of people on board and at least two police officers were dragged from the Mississippi River onto nearby ships.
Rescuers including tugboat operators, nearby workers, police and other responders rushed to assist as the Atlantic Asphalt tanker hit the American Heritage while it was docked. Devon Flanagan, who was working at the Port of New Orleans, said he saw the ship on its side and passengers in the water.
Authorities said the cause of the crash was not yet known. Coast Guard Captain Melanie Burnham said it appeared the tanker suffered a “loss of steering,” while the National Transportation Safety Board planned to investigate.
Moreno said passengers who were not injured were taken to a nearby auditorium, where cruise officials completed a roll call to confirm everyone was accounted for. The American Heritage, built in 2015 and operated by American Cruise Lines, was finishing an eight-day cruise to destinations in Louisiana and Mississippi.
For the tanker, the ship is owned by Nave Shipping SA, which is registered in Monrovia, Liberia, according to the International Maritime Organization, and is described as a subsidiary of China State Shipbuilding Corporation. The tanker specializes in asphalt and bitumen cargoes, according to a live shipping tracker.
A maritime law expert at Tulane University, Martin Davies, said video suggested “some type of catastrophic system failure” aboard the vessel and called the crash timing “super bad luck” as passengers were departing. He said the tanker was moving upriver slowly and that loss of steering for an upbound ship suggests something went “really badly wrong.”
← More stories