The Coast Guard has announced that the third and final Coast Guard Marine Board of Investigation hearing into the sinking of the El Faro will take place early next month in Jacksonville, Florida.
The 790-foot container vessel sank in Hurricane Joaquin on Oct. 1, 2015, while sailing from Jacksonville to San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Coast Guard Capt. Jason Neubauer is chairman of the El Faro Marine Board of Investigation. He says in order to collect more factual evidence, the board will be talking with additional crewmembers who previously served on the El Faro, officials with the ship’s owners, as well as Coast Guard officials and other experts.
He says investigators have additional questions after reviewing information from the El Faro’s voice data recorder, which was recovered last August.
“After analyzing all of the data that was on there, along with the audio transcript that was released in December, you know some of the witnesses were generated from that,” he says. “It has been over a year since the incident occurred, but the work hasn’t stopped. Both from the Coast Guard and the National Transportation Safety Board, we’ve been steadily collecting what we need to make the proper analysis and recommendations.”
Neubauer says the board wants to investigate all the potential factors that could have caused the El Faro to sink.
All 33 crew members died, including four from Maine.
