The National Transportation Safety Board is now looking at yesterday morning's incident where a Seastreak commuter ferry from NJ crashed into Pier 11 in lower Manhattan. With over 300 passengers, the collision sent dozens (the Post says 93) to hospitals. While the investigation is far from over, the crew is apparently blaming a mechanical issue.
According to the Daily News (which reports that 74 were injured), "At least one crew member told police and the Coast Guard that the Seastreak Wall Street hit a buoy about 100 feet from the dock, a source said. The boat then zipped past its lower Manhattan slip and plowed into a neighboring dock — sending passengers flying from their seats, crashing through glass doors and writhing on the deck in agony. Crew members said the ferry’s controls locked up, according to police sources. It wasn’t clear if the buoy collision caused the failure."
The boat was traveling at over 10 mph at the time of the crash, which the NY Times says is "well above the pace of its typical crawl into the dock." Department of Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan said, "Basically, it was a hard landing." DNAinfo reports, "A preliminary investigation revealed that the Seastreak ferry's machinery malfunctioned."
The boat's passengers were ready to disembark, so many were standing when the boat crashed. Two people were critically injured. One told the Times that "she careered into a table, injuring her neck and shoulder, as blood and broken glass began to speck the aisles." Another told the Post, "All of a sudden, people who were standing up went flying into the aisles — people flew four, five, six feet. People who were standing outside crashed into glass doors and shattered them."
Seastreak has a history of incidents since 2007, including when the "Seastreak Wall Street crashed into an E. 35th St. dock, tearing a two-foot hole in the starboard bow six feet above sea level." Seastreak wrote on its Facebook yesterday:
Our priority continues to be the people who were injured. Right now, we’re working to bring family members to the city and to make other arrangements to help them.
We want to thank New York City’s emergency responders for arriving on the scene so quickly and helping us attend to those who were hurt. Our thoughts and prayers continue to be with those who were injured.
We are simply shocked and stunned that this happened. We know passengers rely on us to provide safe transit on our boats - and safety is the number one concern for our company. We are very sorry this accident occurred.
We are working with the National Transportation Safety Board and Coast Guard to determine what happened. We don’t have those answers yet, but will do whatever we can to find out.
