Written by Capt. Jason Neubauer, Coast Guard Office of Investigations and Casualty Analysis
On May 27, the Coast Guard concluded the second round of public hearings for the Marine Board of Investigation (MBI) into the loss of the United States-flagged steam ship El Faro, and its 33 crewmembers. The MBI convened Oct 7, 2015 and the first public hearing session commenced on Feb 16, 2016. All sessions are available for viewing on our LiveStream channel, livestream.com/ElFaro.
A third public hearing is currently being considered for the fall of 2016. The date of this hearing will be influenced by efforts to recover and analyze the El Faro’s Voyage Data Recorder, and a notice will be posted to Maritime Commons once a date has been set.
In the meantime, the MBI continues to collect evidence for the investigation as we attempt to determine all of the causal factors in order to prevent another tragedy like this from ever happening again.
To help ensure every possible lead is examined, I encourage anyone who wishes to share input or suggestions to please e-mail the Board directly at elfaro@uscg.mil. We will maintain confidentiality for all contributors who wish to remain anonymous and we’re accepting any information or suggestions. The MBI reviews and follows-up on every email received.
General questions or comments on the El Faro investigation can be left on the ‘submit ideas’ tab on the right of this blog post, below, or on Twitter via @maritimecommons, http://twitter.com/maritimecommons , by using #ElFaro.
This blog is not a replacement or substitute for the formal posting of regulations and updates or existing processes for receiving formal feedback of the same. Links provided on this blog will direct the reader to official source documents, such as the Federal Register, Homeport and the Code of Federal Regulations. These documents remain the official source for regulatory information published by the Coast Guard.