Inspector: El Faro's boilers were in 'very bad shape'

Coast Guard panel questions boiler conditions, how much fuel ship had aboard

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – El Faro's boilers were severely deteriorated and in “very bad shape” before its ill-fated final voyage, according to testimony Thursday from the man who inspected them.

Luke Laakso, of Walashek Boiler Inspectors, gave that testimony at the Prime Osborn Convention Center before the U.S. Coast Guard panel investigating the sinking of the Jacksonville-based cargo ship.

The 790-foot SS El Faro sank in a hurricane Oct. 1 after losing propulsion near the Bahamas on its way from Jacksonville to San Juan, Puerto Rico. All 33 aboard died.

Laakso, who said he is not a certified inspector for the company that manufactured El Faro's boilers, inspected the boilers in September and said that there was a 3-4 inch gap between the wall of the boiler and the tubes, which showed signs of flame impediment.

“I would recommend it was fixed right away, but that’s only a recommendation of us being contractors,” Laakso said. “It’s really up to the ship’s owner at that point.”

TOTE Maritime Puerto Rico, which owns El Faro, decided to make those repairs in November 2015 when the ship would have been dry-docked in Freeport. That would have been nearly two months after Laakso's inspection.

The ship never made it that far.

The Coast Guard investigative board has been interviewing company officials, guard personnel and others to help identify any misconduct or other issues that may have played a role in the ship's sinking. After another round of hearings later this year, the Coast Guard will issue a report.

The board can levy civil charges, and will forward any evidence of criminal misconduct to the U.S. Department of Justice.  On Tuesday, the board's chairman, Capt. Jason Neubauer, told reporters he did not think the hearings had uncovered any such evidence thus far.

“The main recommendations would deal with potential new safety rules, regulations, laws that will prevent this kind of incident from occurring again,” Neubauer said. “There could also be enforcement actions, probably civil penalties. That's what the Coast Guard can levy.”

Neubauer asked Laakso on Thursday what he would do if he found an immediate threat to life safety during one of his inspections.

“If something like that was to occur, I would speak to the chief engineer on board, but I never saw anything like that,” Laakso said.

A former El Faro crew member testified Thursday that the ship had plenty of fuel to make its voyage, but members of the board questioned the ship's fuel reserve, how long it could stay afloat and how much it lists, or leans.

As a ship sails and uses up fuel, the ships' weight and balance change along the way.

According to testimony Thursday, standard practice for El Faro was to not fill the fuel tanks up completely, which allowed for maximum cargo weight.

Crews would fill the tanks with more than what was needed to make the trip to Puerto Rico, but would leave some slack to allow weight for maximum cargo. The panel questioned whether that left enough fuel to detour around large storms.

Family members of the crew showed up to the hearings Thursday in T-shirts provided by the Seafarers Union to honor El Faro’s crew.

Those family members said they’ve learned a lot from the hearings, which are expected to wrap up with testimony on Friday.

“Just understanding that the tragic event of that voyage and understanding now how there could have been a series of events that played into that has really opened my eyes about what it must have been like,” said Pastor Robert Green, whose son died on El Faro. “The age of the ship, the condition of the boilers, those assumptions that can be made on those types of things is enormous.”

The families said they hope for some maritime changes in the future.

“We want to make sure this never happens again to any American seafarer that’s out there everyday., working hard, just like everyone else, in extremely difficult conditions,” said Glen Jackson, whose brother died on El Faro.

The next step in the search for answers in the El Faro sinking is to try to recover the ship's voyage data recorder, which is presumed to be on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.

The results of the second search effort for the VDR will determine when the next round of hearings begin. They would likely happen sometime in May if the VDR is not found and would be pushed back to June if it is.

The location for the next round of hearings has not been decided.

Coast Guard initially didn't think El Faro was sinking

When an initial report arrived saying the captain of El Faro had called ashore for help, the U.S. Coast Guard didn't believe the vessel was at risk of sinking and later had software problems while preparing a response plan.

Still, Coast Guard Petty Officer 2nd Class Matthew Chancery testified Wednesday that the ship's distress was soon clear and that software issues did not delay search efforts.

Chancery said initial conversations with a representative for TOTE Inc. led the Coast Guard to believe early on that the ship was disabled, but managing to stabilize the situation.

The morning that the ship sank, El Faro Capt. Michael Davidson told TOTE's designated person ashore, Capt. John Lawrence, he thought the crew would be able to pump out water coming into the ship, according to testimony.

TIMELINE: Coast Guard presentation on search of missing ship

Based on this information, Chancery told Lawrence he thought the ship might be able to anchor and ride out the bad weather. Even though El Faro was in 15,000 feet of water, Chancery said there were islands near where they thought the ship might be, and that the storm might push the vessel into shallower water.

During these initial conversations, however, Chancery said he heard El Faro's distress alarm and became "very alarmed."  When he plotted the ship's location and was unable to reach the vessel's satellite phone, Chancery knew the ship was in serious trouble.

"I knew the general area was right in the middle of (Hurricane) Joaquin," he said.

The Coast Guard had no aircraft that could reach the site in the storm, and the closest possible cutter was hundreds of miles away, Chancery said. The guard was able to get a hurricane hunter aircraft working for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to send out a call to the ship. Another vessel in the same general area that was also experiencing trouble also called El Faro, with no reply, he said.

Chancery said crews went into distress mode, but there were glitches with the software the Coast Guard uses to plan searches, called SAR-OPS. So, crews resorted to other methods including using paper charts. Later, they had to spend hours re-inputting data into the software system to use it, Chancery said. He said the software became instrumental later in the search.

"In terms of response time, I don't think the loss of this system would affect it at all," Chancery said, saying all of the guard's assets were unable to reach the area immediately anyway because of the hurricane. Even with winds still high, the guard did send one plane in the next day which was damaged and experienced severe turbulence, Capt. Todd Coggeshall testified on Tuesday.

An attorney for Davidson's widow thanked Chancery after his testimony.

"On behalf of Theresa Davidson and the Davidson family, I want to thank you for all the efforts you made," attorney William Bennett said.

Also Wednesday, an expert on older ships told the panel of Coast Guard and National Transportation Safety Board experts that the industry continues to operate cargo ships like the El Faro well past their life span.

Robert Frump has studied the shipping industry for decades as both a journalist and author since 1983, when he covered another ship disaster.

"Most of us that were involved in that thought that we were establishing a policy that was going to last a long time, and it's been good for 30 years," Frump said.

Frump said the shipping industry has just let ships get too old, and he wasn't totally surprised another one sank.

"The industry is in denial," Frump said. "The companies do not build new ships largely because they're so expensive. The old ships each year have more and more value. So you see a system that keeps these old, unsafe ships at sea, and they get pass after pass after pass."

Frump said it's not TOTE's responsibility to fix the issue of too many aging ships; it's the entire industry that needs to change.

"It's as if you put your entire family in a 1975 Jeep Wagoneer and got it through DMV inspections and then think it's OK to ship your family across the Sahara Desert. You'd never do that," Frump said.

Also Wednesday, manager of the company that services the voyage data recorder mounted on the El Faro might have been expired. The VDR was serviced in December 2014 and it was not noted whether the battery that was set to expire in May of 2015 was replaced.

That VDR was serviced in December of 2014. At that time, the battery should have been replaced according to an executive for the company that serviced it, but he says he’s not sure if that happened. Today we also heard from the Coast Guard officer who first talked to TOTE the morning the ship went down.

Vikki Jo Kennedy, a merchant mariner and fisherman who was interested in this case and has attended the hearings each day, was kicked out Wednesday after confronting one of the Coast Guard captain's as Tuesday's session wrapped up. She's unhappy with certain aspects of the Coast Guards' rescue efforts and wasn't happy she was kicked out.  She said contacting a lawyer as well as U.S. Senator Bill Nelson to complain.

Late Tuesday, the Coast Guard said the one body found by Coast Guard crews searching for the El Faro was too decomposed to identify, so it was left to be collected later while searchers continued seeking survivors.

Coggeshall, who led search efforts for the freighter after it disappeared Oct. 1, testified Tuesday before a Coast Guard investigative panel a tracker put on the body for later recovery did not work, so it was never located.

Coggeshall said it would have been possible to collect the remains right then, but the crew left the body to resume looking for survivors. By the time they returned, the remains were too decomposed to identify by gender or ethnicity.


About the Authors:

Scott is a multi-Emmy Award Winning Anchor and Reporter, who also hosts the “Going Ringside With The Local Station” Podcast. Scott has been a journalist for 25 years, covering stories including six presidential elections, multiple space shuttle launches and dozens of high-profile murder trials.