Maritime Injury Lawyer Blog

Early the morning of June 11, the crew of F/V FLYING OCEAN contacted Coast Guard Air Station Kodiak requesting medevac, stating that they had taken aboard the captain of F/V PROVIDENCE, who had suffered a hand injury near Chignik, Alaska, and that they were headed toward Kodiak. The Coast Guard launched a helicopter at 4:35 a.m. in order to airlift the captain to Kodiak, where emergency medical care awaited. The PROVIDENCE captain was reported to be in stable condition.

Continue reading "Captain of Fishing Vessel Medevaced" »

Seattle-based, 145-foot F/V CAPE HORN crewmembers called the Coast Guard for help early the morning of June 8, after a crewmate, who had been working on the electrical switchboard, apparently sustained a 480V electrical shock with cardiac complications.
A Coast Guard helicopter reached CAPE HORN and successfully medevaced the man to Dillingham, 172 miles away, for medical care.

The US Coast Guard has confirmed that the pilot of an offshore helicopter that was on its way to a rig to fetch workers has died in a crash in the Gulf of Mexico off Louisiana.

The helicopter was on its way to a rig when it went down in the Gulf of Mexico.  Only the pilot was on board at the time.  At the time of the crash, the helicopter was very near the rig it was headed toward. The Helicopter was owned by PHI Inc.

A volunteer dive team quickly recovered the body of the pilot after the crash.  The Coast Guard does not believe that poor visibility was a factor here.  PHI has also not released any official statement about the crash.

A barge deckhand in Illinois was injured Monday afternoon after a line broke at Lock and Dam 13 located on the upper Mississippi above the city of Fulton.

The Lockmaster John Mueller who confirmed that around 4 p.m. on Monday, a 1 1/2-inch-diameter barge line broke and hit a deckhand in the head, knocking him down. Other deckhands and crewmembers were able to secure other barge lines and stop the barges from moving, and were able to quickly call an ambulance for the injured worker.

The name of the injured barge worker has not been released however the Clinton Herald was able to confirm that the injured man is at Iowa City Hospital with non-critical injuries.

A 50-year-old man was medically evacuated from a fishing vessel operating off the coast of Provincetown over the weekend after being hit in the face with the ship's gear.  

The Coast Guard said they received a call at 10:13 a.m. on Saturday from the 74-foot F/V Mischief reporting that one of its crewmembers had suffered bad facial injuries after being struck by the gear approximately 110 miles east of Provincetown in the Atlantic Ocean.

The Coast Guard sent a number of assets to the scene and were able safely transport the man, who has not yet been identified, from the Mischief to Logan International Airport to receive medical attention.

The Disney Fantasy rescued four men stranded at sea off the coast of Key West, FL, when the liner spotted the marooned men aboard a small raft. The men were brought aboard the ship and subsequently provided with medical care, food and water. The 130,000 ton cruise ship contacted the U.S. Coast Guard to coordinate with the authorities to begin transfer protocol of the rescued men. The crew aboard the Disney ship exercised maritime skill and expertise while performing the rescue, according to a representative of Disney Cruise Line.

The Coast Guard Tuesday morning rescued three crewmembers from an overturned fishing vessel near Winchester Bay, Ore.

According to the Coast Guard report, crews from North Bend, Oregon received a report at approximately 12 a.m. of a fishing vessel, the F/V Aries, that was overdue for its arrival and sent a HH-65 Dolphin helicopter along with a 47-foot motor lifeboat to investigate and locate the fishing vessel.

Continue reading "Three Rescued From Fishing Vessel" »

48-foot Honolulu-based F/V ROBIN 2008 capsized and sank about fifteen miles south of Oahu, Hawaii, on May 27. The fisherman who was aboard was safely rescued, thanks to his emergency preparedness and thanks to the Coast Guard team who answered his call for help. The fisherman used the proper VHF Channel 16 for his mayday, and he activated his EPIRB (Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon), which enabled the Coast Guard locate, rescue, and transfer him to the EMS in Honolulu. His name and his condition have not been released. No pollution has been reported.

Continue reading "Fishing Vessel Sinks" »

On May 25, shortly after 9:00 p.m., the five-person crew of F/V ST. JOSEPH sent out a mayday that they'd lost steering in 20-foot seas, about 52 miles southeast of Cordova, Alaska. F/V HEIDI LINEA relayed the mayday to the Coast Guard, which sent an MH-Jayhawk helicopter to the area. The helicopter arrived around 11:00 p.m. and successfully hoisted the five crewmembers to safety.

Continue reading "Crew Airlifted to Safety" »

Beaver County commissioners said that a man working on the new Veterans Bridge project over the Beaver River was flown to a Pittsburgh hospital after receiving a jolt of electricity after a barge crane hit high tension power lines.

Accounts of how the unidentified worker was injured vary, but Commissioner Dennis Nichols said a large crane being set up on a barge in the river came in contact with high-tension power lines overhead. Nichols said he wasn't certain if the man was in the crane or on the barge at the time of the incident.

Continue reading "Worker Burned in Barge Accident" »

Two separate, successful rescues of sailing crews occurred during the past week, thanks to the Automated Mutual Assistance Vessel Rescue System (AMVER). Originating after the TITANIC tragedy, AMVER has developed into a computer-based, voluntary-enrollment global reporting system managed by the U.S. Coast Guard and used by maritime rescue authorities worldwide to alert and divert nearby AMVER-enrolled ships to aid mariners in peril.

The first rescue was of the crew of S/V OUTER LIMITS, about 400 miles northeast of Bermuda, on the evening of May 18. OUTER LIMITS had been racing from the Bahamas to the Azores. A national rescue center in the Netherlands alerted the U.S. Coast Guard that the four crewmembers aboard OUTER LIMITS had reported they had struck a whale and were flooding. German-flagged container ship E.R.MELBOURNE was only 35 miles away and answered the call to rescue.

Continue reading "Two Sailboat Crews Rescued" »

Two aluminum flat-bottomed boats collided on the Mississippi River near Burlington, Iowa, at around 2:00 a.m. on Saturday. Both boats, at 18 and 20 feet long, were being used to transport revelers from where they were partying on a river sandbar back to shore. One boat was empty of passengers with one driver, and the other boat held a total of eleven people.

When the boats collided, the bow of the boat which was full of people was sheered away; all eleven people were thrown into the river. The operator of the other boat picked up seven of those people, none of whom incurred life-threatening injuries. Four people remained missing until Sunday, when they were found dead near the crash site. Those who died are listed as Jacob Boyd, 22; Matthew House, 21; Blake Eakins, 21; and Caitlyn Atchley, 20, all of Burlington, Iowa.

Continue reading "Boats Collide; Four Revelers Dead" »

Coast Guard crews in Galveston, Texas are searching for 6 crewmembers of a fishing vessel that may have sunk near Galveston, TX in Gulf of Mexico early Monday afternoon.

Coast Guard Sector Houston-Galveston said they received a mayday call from the captain of a fishing vessel at approximately 1:15 p.m. reporting that their vessel was taking on water, and the six people aboard were abandoning ship into an orange life raft.

Details, however, are still unclear as the mayday call was said to be of poor quality.  At this point, the USCG does not know the name or details of the vessel and it is not clear whether the fishing vessel was part of a commercial operation or private.

Continue reading "6 Missing After Fishing Vessel Sinks" »

A maritime worker, who was a forklift driver at the Port of Seattle, was fatally injured when he became trapped between a container and forklift, according to Hector Castro, a spokesman for the Washington Department of Labor and Industries (L&I). The victim was taken to Harborview Medical Center for treatment of his injuries, but he did not survive.

The accident happened on Thursday, May 17, at Terminal 18 at the Port of Seattle and was shut down for 24 hours. The accident remains under investigation at this time.

Another maritme worker was killed on the same day in an unrelated maritime accident.

Continue reading "Two Maritime Workers Killed in Seattle" »

The captain of a 29-foot towboat went missing on Wednesday and was later found dead after issuing a distress call that his vessel was taking on water west of Pocasset, Mass. near Buzzards Bay.

Watchstanders from the Sector Southeastern New England command center said they received the call at approximately 1 a.m. from the captain of the TowBoat U.S. vessel, Triple J.

A 25-foot Response Boat from Station Cape Cod Canal, a 41-foot utility boat from Station Woods Hole and the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Tigershark were immediately launched to search for the captain.  Hours later at around 6 a.m a harbor master from Wareham, Mass., found the Triple J partially submerged approximately three miles south of Hog Island Channel.  At first the vessel was thought to be unmanned when it was found.

Continue reading "Towboat Captain Found Dead" »