National Transportation Board News

The National Transportation Board said Thursday that a Mississippi River towing vessel’s pilot and its captain pushed its tow up against a riverbank too close to a railroad track, leading to a collision and train derailment near Galland, Iowa.Marine Investigation Report 22/22 details the NTSB’s investigation into the Nov. 13, 2021, collision between the towing vessel Baxter Southern and a BNSF coal train transiting the track along the shoreline of the Upper Mississippi River. The train struck a barge that was overhanging the railroad track.

The voyage data recorder (VDR) from El Faro, a U.S. flagged cargo ship that sank during Hurricane Joaquin in October 2015, has been recovered from the ocean floor late Monday evening, the U.S. National Transportation Board (NTSB) said. The recovery of the capsule caps a 10-month-long effort to retrieve the recorder, which was designed to record navigational data and communications between crewmembers on the ship’s bridge. Investigators hope the recorder will reveal information about the final hours of El Faro’s voyage and the circumstances leading up to the sinking.

The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board has determined that the probable cause of the sinking of tall ship 'Bounty' was the captain's reckless decision to sail the vessel into the well forecasted path of Hurricane Sandy, which subjected the aging vessel and the inexperienced crew to conditions from which the vessel could not recover. Contributing to the sinking was the lack of effective safety oversight by the vessel organization. On October 29, 2012, the tall ship Bounty sank off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, while attempting to transit through the forecasted path of Hurricane Sandy.