The crew of El Faro received a storm track forecast that was 10 hours old ahead of its tragic sinking during Hurricane Joaquin as a result of a data processing delay, two Applied Weather Technologies (AWT) executives said today.
AWT support manager Jerry Hale and vice president Rich Brown revealed the problem at a US Coast Guard Marine Board of Investigation (MBI) hearing into the US-flag ro-ro's sinking.
"The underlying model data was up to date. The winds, the waves, the pressure were all up to date. The storm track was out of date," said Brown, whose company provides weather forecasting data and weather routing for ships.
Testimony by various witnesses has indicated that Captain Michael Davidson, the master of the 5,330-lane-metre El Faro (built 1975), intended to take a path "below" the path of Hurricane Joaquin. But the powerful storm's path changed rapidly and unexpectedly.
The AWT executives could not provide details about the delay in updating the storm's track to the ship, other than to say an "anomaly" may have been caused by a delay in processing the storm forecast data, which made it miss the deadline to be transmitted along with a batch of other weather information.
El Faro had a contract to receive AWT data by email four times per day. Owner TOTE Maritime, a subsidiary of Seattle conglomerate Saltchuk, did not adopt weather routing until after the sinking.
