Ship founders ‘right near eye of hurricane’
Hurricane Joaquin destroyed houses, uprooted trees and unleashed heavy flooding as it hurled torrents of rain across the Bahamas on Friday, and the U.S. Coast Guard said it was trying to reach a disabled cargo ship with 33 people aboard that lost contact during the storm.
The Coast Guard said the 224-metre ship named El Faro had taken on water and was listing at 15 degrees near Crooked Island, one of the islands most battered by the hurricane. Officials said the crew includes 28 U.S. citizens and five from Poland.
“This vessel is disabled basically right near the eye of Hurricane Joaquin,” said Capt. Mark Fedor. “We’re going to go and try and save lives. We’re going to push it to the operational limits as far as we can.”
Officials said they hadn’t been able to re-establish communication with the vessel, which was travelling from Jacksonville, Fla., to San Juan, Puerto Rico. The Coast Guard said the crew earlier reported it had been able to contain the flooding.
Fedor said there were up to nine-metre waves in the area, and that heavy winds could have destroyed the ship’s communications equipment. The ship went missing when Joaquin was a Category 4 storm. The hurricane has since lost strength and become a Category 3 storm.
On Friday evening, Coast Guard Petty Officer Jon-Paul Rios said the planes and helicopters involved in the search had returned to base because of darkness and would resume the search for the ship at first light.
Florida-based TOTE Services, the ship’s owner, said in a brief statement that it was working with the U.S. Coast Guard and trying to establish communication with the ship.
The U.S. National Hurricane Center said Joaquin’s threat to the U.S. East Coast was fading as new forecasts showed it likely to curve out into the Atlantic while moving north and weakening in coming days.
But the slow-moving storm continued to batter parts of the Bahamas, cutting communication to several islands, most of them lightly populated. There had been no reports of fatalities or injuries, said Capt. Stephen Russell, the director of the Bahamas National Emergency Management Agency.
Officials were investigating reports of shelters being damaged and flooded, as well as two boats with a total of five people that remained missing.
Joaquin had maximum sustained winds of 205 km/h, according to the Miami-based hurricane centre. By late evening the storm was centred about 40 kilometres northnortheast of San Salvador, Bahamas, and was moving northeast near 11 km/h.
The storm was expected to continue north away from the Bahamas, with some weakening expected on Saturday as it follows a projected path farther from the U.S. East Coast than originally predicted.
Rick Knabb, director of the hurricane centre, said Joaquin is expected to pass well offshore from the eastern seaboard.
“We no longer have any models forecasting the hurricane to come into the East Coast,” he said. “But we are still going to have some bad weather.”
In addition, the entire East Coast will experience dangerous surf and rip currents through the weekend, he said.