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A major rescue operation took place Friday after a tanker struck a river cruise ship on the Mississippi River near the Port of New Orleans, leaving the American Heritage passenger boat on its side and largely submerged in the water.
Everyone aboard both vessels has been accounted for, officials said, and there were no fatalities reported.
The much larger tanker, identified as the Atlantic Asphalt, crashed into the paddlewheel cruise boat while it was docked at about 12:30 p.m. local time, the Port of New Orleans said. The American Heritage had docked about two hours earlier for passengers to disembark.
In a news briefing late Friday afternoon, New Orleans Mayor Helena Moreno said 32 passengers from the cruise ship were taken to area hospitals for treatment, but none with critical injuries. No one aboard the tanker was hurt, Moreno said.
New Orleans Harbor Police Chief Melanie Montroll said two of her officers were also hospitalized during the rescue operation, but were in good condition.
There were about 129 passengers, in addition to crew members, aboard the American Heritage at the time of the collision, according to Port NOLA.
Moreno said the tanker “lost control” and crashed into the cruise ship. As passengers were disembarking from the cruise ship, it “began to sink, and then eventually toppled over and flipped,” sending people into the water, the mayor said.
Some people were seen in the water in life jackets or standing near the railing as the other side of the ship listed farther into the water. Nearby boats reported rescuing more than a dozen people from the water.
Emergency responders, including Port NOLA Harbor Police, the New Orleans Fire Department, the New Orleans Police Department and the U.S. Coast Guard, conducted rescue and response operations, Port NOLA said. Moreno said that along with local and federal agencies, private vessels that happened to be on the river at the time responded “as volunteers to try and get people out of the water.”
Moreno described the successful rescue operation as a “miracle on the Mississippi.”
One witness, Jamie Holford, told CBS News he saw the American Heritage hit the dock after the collision. He described seeing people hurrying off the boat. Then, as it rolled over, some were climbing over the railings of the boat, he said.
“It looked like something off the Titanic,” he said.
Asked what the collision sounded like, Holford said, “It sounded like a war movie. Just imagine tons of steel crunching. That’s what it sounded like.”
U.S. Coast Guard Capt. Melanie Burnham said Coast Guard investigators were on scene working to determine what caused the tanker to lose control.
“The investigation is still ongoing, there seems to be some kind of a loss of steering,” Burnham told reporters. “The exact reason why, we don’t know that.”
The National Transportation Safety Board said in a statement that it was sending a “Go Team” to the scene Saturday to begin its own investigation into the cause. However, in a follow up social media post, the NTSB clarified that because of the nationwide ground stop earlier Friday that canceled and delayed thousands of flights, it would no longer be sending one of its board members to the scene, and its team of investigators would be driving instead of flying to New Orleans.
Burnham also noted that she was working to reopen the river, which the Coast Guard had closed when the collision occurred.
“We’re going to start evaluating how to reopen it as soon as possible,” Burnham said.
In a Truth Social post, President Trump praised the response of the Coast Guard and other law enforcement agencies for “doing such an incredible job of rescue, and other work, having to do with the crash of the two ships in Louisiana.”
The American Heritage was built in 2015 and is operated by American Cruise Lines. It is five stories and can hold up to 150 passengers.
The Associated Press reports that the tanker is owned by a subsidiary of the China State Shipbuilding Corporation, a sprawling Chinese state-owned conglomerate, according to the live shipping tracker MarineTraffic. The tanker specializes in carrying large quantities of asphalt and bitumen, a semisolid substance that is often used for road construction and roofing, according to MarineTraffic.
CBS News has reached out to the tanker’s owner for comment.
