The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the conditions that led a Mexican naval ship to crash into the Brooklyn Bridge over the weekend in an incident that killed two crew members and injured 19 others.
The NTSB’s investigative team arrived late Sunday in New York to study a variety of factors that could have prompted the Mexican Navy training ship to strike the bridge. NTSB’s team is comprised of experts in nautical operations, marine and bridge engineering and survival factors, the agency said. As of Monday, investigators still had not been granted access to the ship or crew by the Mexican government, though talks are underway.
It is too early for investigators to discern what cause the tall ship to strike the 142-year-old bridge, but it was traveling in turbulent waters at the time of the crash in a busy harbor with narrow and curvy channels that can make for challenging passage. It will take the NTSB months to fully investigate and release a report on the crash.
The ship was supposed to head south and sail out of the harbor into the sea but instead traveled north and ended up striking the bridge. Officials did not provide details on what happened to cause Cuauhtemoc to travel in the wrong direction.
New York officials said the boat had lost control because of a mechanical issue and that it had lost power before the crash in a preliminary report. The NTSB said on Monday that the ship picked up speed as it traveled toward the bridge but that they did not know where local officials got the report of the engine failure from.
“We are going to be accessing all the different electronic data to determine at what point the vessel began accelerating. We do have a bit of time where it was maintaining a constant speed of about two 2.3 knots, and then the speed began to increase, and that’s something we will be looking into as part of our engineering assessment of the operation of the engine,” said NTSB investigator in charge Brian Young.
There have also been questions about a tugboat that is seen in videos and whether it moved away from the ship too soon and should have stayed with it until it traveled out to see.
NTSB said Monday that the tugboat helped the vessel get off the pier, but it was still looking into its policies and procedures and what its guidance was. Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Sunday that the Cuauhtemoc did not use the tugboat’s assistance and was responding after the fact.
Federal investigators also have not talked to any members of the crew as of Monday afternoon but are working with the Mexican government to gain access to the ship and its crew members and captain.
There were similar questions last year before a cargo ship crashed into a major bridge in Baltimore last year that caused a shocking collapse.
NTSB Safety Board member Michael Graham said there was no structural issues to the Brooklyn Bridge as a result of the collision.
The 300-foot Cuauhtemoc struck the Brooklyn Bridge on Saturday evening, knocking over its three masts and sending it drifting toward a pier in a chaotic scene captured by onlookers’ videos. Sailors who were perched on the masts could be seen flailing through the air after the collision with the bridge damaged the beams.
Two sailors died from serious injuries suffered during the crash. Nineteen of the crew members required medical treatment after the crash and 22 in total were injured. The Cuauhtemoc had 277 crew on board and was slated to travel to Iceland after its stop in New York where it had been docked at Pier 17 in Manhattan near the Brooklyn Bridge.
Mexico’s Navy said on Monday that 172 cadets and seven officers returned to its naval school. Two cadets remained in New York to get medical treatment but are in stable condition and the rest are staying on board the ship.
New York officials said the ship was never intended to sail under the bridge and was traveling in the wrong direction. The ship’s main mast is roughly 160 feet tall, well higher than the bridge’s clearance of 127 feet.
“To put it mildly, after being fully briefed on last night’s Brooklyn Bridge accident, one thing is very clear: There are many more questions than answers as to how the accident occurred and whether it could have been prevented,” Schumer said Sunday.
