[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 25 (Thursday, February 11, 2016)]
[Senate]
[Page S848]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              THE EL FARO

  Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, late last year a cargo container ship 
carrying 33 men and women left Florida from the Port of Jacksonville en 
route to Puerto Rico. It typically sailed back and forth, carrying 
cargo to and from San Juan, Puerto Rico, but this time it sailed 
directly into the path of a hurricane.
  Two days later the crew sent what would be its final communication, 
reporting that the ship's engines were disabled and the vessel was left 
drifting and tilting, with no power, straight into the path of the 
storm.
  Subsequent to that, despite an exhaustive search and rescue attempt 
by the Coast Guard in the days that followed, the El Faro and her crew 
were never heard from again. Only in one case, in desperately trying to 
do a search and rescue mission, did they find one decomposed body in a 
bodysuit, but they could not find anybody else.
  Since then, the National Transportation Safety Board--the agency 
charged with investigating the incident--has been working tirelessly to 
understand what happened. Why would the ship leave port when they knew 
there was a storm brewing and it was going to cross the path of where 
the ship was supposed to go?
  Working with the U.S. Navy and the Coast Guard, investigators 
eventually found the ship's wreckage scattered at the bottom of the 
ocean east of the Bahama Islands in waters 15,000 feet deep. But what 
they didn't find that day was the ship's voyage data recorder, or what 
we typically refer to as the ship's black box, not unlike the black box 
we look for in the case of an aircraft incident that records all of the 
data.
  Since we have no survivors, this data recorder is a key piece to 
getting the information to understand this puzzle of why that ship 
would sail right into the hurricane. It records and it stores all of 
the ship's communications. Finding it could shed light on what really 
happened onboard in those final hours. Despite the search team's 
exhaustive efforts to locate the data recorder amongst the scattered 
wreckage, they couldn't find it, and eventually they had to call off 
the search.
  Earlier this year, this Senator wrote to the Chairman of the NTSB and 
urged him to go back and search again because finding the ship's data 
recorder is important for us to understand how these 33 human beings 
who have families back at home were lost. I am here to report that at 
this very minute, the NTSB is announcing that they are going back to do 
the search again. At this moment, the NTSB is saying it will resume the 
search for the ship's black box. This time it will do it with the help 
of even more sophisticated equipment to help investigators pinpoint the 
approximate location of the recorder and hopefully, if it is not among 
the wreckage of the ship, point to its location and pick it up off the 
ocean floor.
  The NTSB's decision today--which I commend; and I thank the Chairman 
for continuing to keep after this--to search again for the data 
recorder is a critical step in our understanding of what went so 
tragically wrong that day. We owe it not only to the families of the 
lost mariners aboard the El Faro but to the future safety of all those 
who travel on the high seas. It is up to us to not only understand what 
happened but to do what we can to ensure that it doesn't happen in the 
future.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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