A major salvage operation took place Friday after an oil tanker hit a river cruise ship on the Mississippi River near the Port of New Orleans, leaving the American Heritage passenger ship sideways and largely submerged in water.
All people aboard both ships have been accounted for, officials said, and no deaths have been reported.
The much larger tanker, identified as the Atlantic Asphalt, crashed into the paddle steamer cruise ship while it was docked around 12:30 p.m. local time, the Port of New Orleans said. The American Heritage had docked about two hours earlier to allow passengers to disembark.
At a news conference Friday afternoon, New Orleans Mayor Helena Moreno said 32 passengers from the cruise ship were transported to area hospitals for treatment, but none had serious injuries. No one on board the tanker was injured, Moreno said.
New Orleans Port Police Chief Melanie Montroll said two of her officers were also hospitalized during the rescue operation but were in good condition.
There were approximately 129 passengers, in addition to crew members, aboard the American Heritage at the time of the collision, according to Port NOLA.
Moreno said the tanker “lost control” and crashed into the cruise ship. As passengers disembarked from the cruise ship, it “started to sink and then ended up tipping and turning over,” sending people into the water, the mayor said.
AP Photo/Gérald Herbert 
Some people were seen in the water wearing life jackets or standing near the railing as the other side of the ship sank further into the water. Nearby boats reported rescuing more than a dozen people from the water.
Emergency responders, including Port NOLA Port Police, New Orleans Fire Department, New Orleans Police Department and the U.S. Coast Guard, conducted rescue and response operations, Port NOLA said. Moreno said that along with local and federal agencies, private vessels that were on the river at the time responded “as volunteers to try to get people out of the water.”
Moreno described the successful rescue operation as a “miracle on the Mississippi.”
A witness, Jamie Holford, told CBS News he saw the American Heritage hit the dock after the collision. He described seeing people leaving the boat in a hurry. Then, as he turned around, some were climbing the boat’s railings, he said.
“It looked like something from the Titanic,” he said.
When asked what the collision looked like, Holford replied: “It looked like a war movie. Imagine tons of steel cracking. That’s what it looked like.”
Capt. Melanie Burnham of the U.S. Coast Guard said Coast Guard investigators were on scene to determine what caused the tanker to lose control.
“The investigation is still ongoing, there appears to be some sort of loss of direction,” Burnham told reporters. “The exact reason, we don’t know.”
The National Transportation Safety Board also said in a statement that it would send a “Go Team” to the scene Saturday to begin its own investigation into the cause.
Burnham also said she was working to reopen the river, which the Coast Guard had closed at the time of the collision.
“We’re going to start evaluating how to reopen it as soon as possible,” Burnham said.
In an article in Truth Social, President Trump praised the response of the Coast Guard and other law enforcement agencies for “performing such incredible rescue and other work related to the crash of the two vessels in Louisiana.”
The American Heritage was built in 2015 and is operated by American Cruise Lines. It has five floors and can accommodate up to 150 passengers.
The tanker truck involved in the accident specializes in transporting large quantities of asphalt and bitumen, a semi-solid substance often used for road construction and roofing, according to live maritime tracker MarineTraffic.
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