Just hours after an oil tanker in New Orleans lost steering and slammed into a docked river cruise ship, the city’s port filed a lawsuit to ensure federal investigators can seize the vessel, which is owned by a subsidiary of a Chinese company.
All 197 passengers and crew members of the American Heritage cruise ship survived Friday, along with the tanker’s crew.
READ MORE: All Passengers, Crew Of New Orleans Cruise Ship Survive Oil Tanker Accident On Mississippi River
Authorities said 32 people were taken to hospitals, including two police officers thrown into the Mississippi River when the boat rolled. But none of the injuries were critical and eight remained hospitalized Saturday.
The National Transportation Safety Board said the tanker’s voyage data recorder had been recovered. A 16-member team will spend a week in New Orleans to investigate the incident.
NTSB member John DeLeeuw said the agency plans to release a preliminary report within 24 to 30 days, and the final investigative report is expected in 18 to 24 months.
Lawsuit leads to warrant to take control of tanker
The suit, filed by the New Orleans Board of Port Commissioners, says the tanker Atlantic Asphalt caused at least $1 million in damage to its terminal. A judge issued a warrant Friday giving federal authorities control of the ship for the time being.
The tanker was towed away from the site, but it could take weeks to move the cruise ship, which remains turned on its side against a terminal in the Mississippi River, Coast Guard Capt. Melanie Burnham told reporters Saturday.
The first step is making sure the boat’s 16,000 gallons (60,500 liters) of fuel are safely drained, she said.
Traffic has been limited on the Mississippi River, but Burnham said boats should soon be able to travel upstream and downstream.
The tanker appears to have lost steering, but the exact cause of the accident is not known, Burnham said. The National Transportation Safety Board was sending investigators to New Orleans.
Survivor recalls harrowing moments in river
The first warning to those aboard the American Heritage was that the tanker honked its horn several times as it floated toward the cruise ship, passenger Joe Knab told WDSU-TV.
The blow was violent and the ship immediately began to list. The crew gathered everyone on the third deck to put on life jackets and begin getting them off the boat, but it suddenly rolled and sent Knab and about 100 other passengers and crew into the muck of the Mississippi River, where the water was 66 degrees Fahrenheit (19 degrees Celsius).
Tugboat operators, other cruise ship captains, nearby workers, police and other rescuers rushed to help.
“Everything is fine now, but it was a little scary at the time. I thought I was drowning because I kept swinging underneath – and the water doesn’t taste very good,” Knab told the TV station, still in the jeans he wore on the boat, now covered in mud.
Knab said he thought he was in the water for about 15 minutes. He laughed and said his 20 years in the Navy probably helped.
“They taught us not to drown,” Knab said.
WATCH: News Wrap: Oil Tanker Crashes Onto River Cruise Ship In New Orleans
Knab wore a shirt from a Hilton hotel where passengers were congregating. The rest of his belongings were in the river. Somehow his cell phone still worked. He was hoping to catch a plane back to Wichita, Kansas, soon, but he wasn’t sure how Friday’s domestic layover was going to pose another problem for him.
Putting the life jackets on passengers as they waited to get off the boat likely saved a number of lives when the boat suddenly went into the water, New Orleans Port Police Chief Melanie Montroll said.
“Whether it’s 10 feet of water or 200 feet, having those vests, having that population put those vests on and float upstream while we retrieve them — I think that was the biggest success factor,” Montroll said.
The American Heritage was completing an eight-day cruise to several destinations on the Mississippi River.
The owner of the tanker is a subsidiary of a Chinese company
The Atlantic Asphalt is a 520-foot-long (160-meter-long) vessel. It had a final destination in New Orleans, according to MarineTraffic, and was sailing under the flag of the Marshall Islands.
The ship is owned by a company called Nave Shipping SA, which was registered in Monrovia, Liberia, according to the International Maritime Organization and which was one of the defendants in the lawsuit filed Friday.
Nave Shipping is a subsidiary of China State Shipbuilding Corporation, a sprawling Chinese state-owned conglomerate, according to live shipping tracker MarineTraffic.
China State Shipbuilding Corp. did not respond to an emailed request for comment.
The tanker truck involved in the accident specializes in transporting large quantities of asphalt and bitumen, a semi-solid substance often used for road and roof construction, according to MarineTraffic.
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