Weather delays search for shipwreck survivors
Coast Guard says divers are looking for 12 missing people off the coast of Louisiana
PORT FOURCHON, La. — Families anxiously awaited news of the 12 people missing from a capsized oil industry vessel Thursday while stormy weather delayed divers from searching for survivors.
Rescuers don’t know whether any of the missing might be caught inside the lift boat that flipped over Tuesday in hurricane-force winds and high seas about 8 miles off the coast of Louisiana, Coast Guard spokesmen said.
“There is the potential they are still there, but we don’t know,” Petty Officer 2nd Class Jonathan Lally said early Thursday. “We’re still searching for 12 people because there are 12 still missing.”
The Coast Guard said divers were on the scene Thursday afternoon but could not confirm whether they’d begun diving.
A handful of the missing workers’ family gathered at a two-story fire station at Port Fourchon, a sprawling port where much of the industry that services the oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico is based.
Workers from across Louisiana and other parts of the country arrive at the port to load up on the fleet of helicopters and ships that take them to the oil rigs miles out for long stretches of work. The flat landscape is punctuated by cranes where
cargo can be loaded or unloaded and docks or hangers to make repairs.
In a nearby harbor, shrimping boats were docked, and fishing camps stood raised on stilts to protect them from incoming storms.
Marion Cuyler, who is engaged to crane operator Chaz Morales, spoke to reporters Thursday outside the fire station after briefings by executives with boat owner Seacor and the Coast Guard. She said they were told that divers entered the water Thursday morning, paused because of rough weather and were returning later. She said she believes all 12 missing people are on the vessel.
“I heard from someone that was rescued that they are in the boat — which is why we needed those divers in the water, as quickly as possible,” she said.
Cuyler wavered between optimism and fear as she spoke but held out hope that Morales was in a part of the ship that had air after the accident and would be rescued alive.
“Hopefully, they are all in one room, and they can just rescue them all in one day,” she said.
She said she and other family members are frustrated and want answers about why the boat went out in the first place.
“I asked, ‘Who gave the orders’ and of course — silence,” she said. Cuyler said she’d told her husband-to-be that he shouldn’t be going out in such weather. “And he knew they shouldn’t have been going out.”
Coast Guard members in a boat made their way to within a few yards of the capsized vessel and tried throwing a hammer at the hull in an attempt to make contact with potential survivors, the agency said in an update Thursday afternoon.
Six people from the Seacor Power were rescued alive and one person’s body was recovered from the water Wednesday as searchers scanned an area roughly the size of Hawaii, the Coast Guard said. The Coast Guard said it had been classified as a “major marine casualty” with the National Transportation Safety Board joining the investigation.
The Lafourche Parish Coroner’s Office identified the dead man as David Ledet, 63, of Thibodaux — a town in southeastern Louisiana.