New Orleans Mayor: All 180 on Cruise Boat Survived Tanker Collision

“We have zero people unaccounted for, which truly is a miracle on the Mississippi,” New Orleans Mayor Helena Moreno said at a news conference.

Every single passenger and crew member survived a terrifying collision on the Mississippi River on Friday when an asphalt tanker apparently lost its steering and slammed directly into a docked river cruise boat holding 180 people.

The impact triggered a massive emergency response as passengers and crew plunged into the Mississippi River while the ship took on water and began to topple over. Video footage captured the much larger Atlantic Asphalt tanker crashing into the docked cruise vessel, as metal and glass crashed and crunched.

Tugboat operators, nearby workers, police and other rescuers rushed to help. Dozens of people caught in the water and at least two police officers were dragged from the 66-degree Fahrenheit (19-degree Celsius) river onto nearby vessels during the rescue effort.

Authorities give update on crash between tanker and New Orleans cruise ship

Rescue Workers Respond to Ship Capsizing Near New Orleans

The boat started listing within minutes of the impact and flipped while emergency workers were still trying to get everyone off the ship.

“It was just chaos,” said Devon Flanagan, a worker at the Port of New Orleans who watched the unfolding disaster from his truck nearby. “You had all types of ships, like other barges and other companies down there trying to help out, which also was a little convoluted because you had people still in the water.”

LIVE Updates: Tanker collides with cruise ship on Mississippi River in New Orleans — WDSU News

Out of the 180 people on board, 32 individuals were transported to the hospital. The mayor said none of them had critical injuries.

Coast Guard Captain Melanie Burnham said that it appeared the tanker seemed to have “some type of loss of steering,” though the exact root cause of the collision was unknown. Plans to examine the incident are underway by the National Transportation Safety Board, although personnel could not immediately travel to New Orleans because nationwide flight groundings stemmed from communications failures at regional air traffic control hubs.

Collision involving riverboat and tanker near Port of New Orleans — 6abc Philadelphia

Logistical Nightmare for Stranded Travelers

Uninjured passengers were brought to a nearby auditorium where cruise officials conducted a roll call to verify that everyone was accounted for. Most of the travelers were from out of town and lost essential personal belongings, including identification cards, car keys, and mobile phones, during the disaster.

“They needed chargers for their phones. Some people didn’t have phones,” Moreno said regarding the immediate needs of the survivors. “This has now made national news. They need to contact their families to let them know they’re OK. Food, hotel rooms, transportation.”

Watch tanker hit cruise boat in New Orleans, rescue boats pull survivors from Mississippi River — MassLive

The vessel involved is the American Heritage, a five-story cruise ship built in 2015 and operated by American Cruise Lines. The ship can hold up to 150 passengers and was finishing an eight-day cruise along Mississippi River destinations across Louisiana and Mississippi.

System Failure Caused Tanker to Strike Departing Passengers

Footage points to an apparent major malfunction aboard the ship alongside “super bad luck” regarding the timing of the strike as guests were disembarking, according to Martin Davies, an expert in maritime law at Tulane University.

Curving road along mississippi river during autumn

The tanker was traveling upriver, going slowly against the current. Navigating that stretch involves the Algiers Point turn, a maneuver the ship had already made before the crash, Davies said.

According to shipping tracking data, the Atlantic Asphalt tanker is owned by a subsidiary of the China State Shipbuilding Corporation. That Chinese state-owned conglomerate accounted for nearly a quarter of the global commercial shipbuilding market in 2022, according to a report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

The vessel specializes in transporting large quantities of asphalt and bitumen, which are semi-solid substances often used for road construction and roofing.