On Sunday, while the battered Cuauhtémoc, a vessel of 91 meters in length, remained on Muelle 36 of Manhattan, still did not know for sure what failed in the accident in which two crew members died.
“If not something worse, after receiving all the information about the accident last night at the Brooklyn bridge, one thing is very clear: there are many more questions than answers about how the accident occurred and if it could have been avoided,” said Senator Chuck Schumer during a press conference on Sunday.
While the National Board of Transportation Security and the Mexican authorities began an exhaustive investigation into the clash, among those questions were what were the “mechanical problems” that, according to the authorities, made the Cuauhtémoc diverted greatly from its route and collide against the bridge, and what role did a tug in the incident that appeared in videos and photographs of the incident on Saturday night.
The Mexican authorities identified the two victims of the clash on Sunday. América Yamileth Sánchez Hernández, 20 years old and a native of the state of Veracruz, was appointed in a publication on social networks by the state governor, Rocío Nahle, who sent the condolences to his family.
“Veracruz is with you,” Nahle wrote.
The second victim was Adal Jair Maldonado Marcos, 23, according to Raúl Rangel González, mayor of San Mateo del Mar, coastal town of the state of Oaxaca from where Maldonado Marcos was original.
At least 22 other people were injured in the clash, 11 of them in critical condition and nine in a stable state, said the Navy of Mexico in a statement.
The accident occurred after the ship left Manhattan’s dock, just below the Brooklyn bridge. He had to go south and leave the port of New York, with a stop at the Brooklyn dock to refuel before heading to Iceland.
Instead, around 8.30 pm, Cuauhtémoc went in the wrong direction, below the Brooklyn bridge, where there was no intention to navigate, according to a spokesman for the city’s emergency management office.
McLallister Towing, a trache, bearing and maritime transport company based in New York, said on Sunday that one of his ships “helped Cuauhtémoc when he left the dock 17”.
After the ship came into contact with the bridge, “our crew provided additional assistance and quickly notified the competent authorities,” the company said in a statement.
“Although the cause of the incident is still an investigation, Mcallister Towing is fully cooperating with the relevant authorities and will continue to support the review process as necessary,” the statement continued.
But Schumer described the tugboat paper differently, by saying: “The ship did not use the help of a tugboat. The mud that appears widely in the published videos was responding after the fact, not helping before. Normally, very often, there is a tug before helping them out, especially in a sailboat.”
On Sunday morning, after the accident, the majestic ship, with its green -gunned helmet and its golden masts almost 50 meters high, remained on spring 36 of the East River, with a firm breeze rocker by browsing its unused masts.
Shortly before 10 am, a group of wounded sailors, including a man with one arm in Cabestrillo and another with the head bandada with white gauze, left the rear of a white transport van to embark again. Supply boxes were transported, such as water and juice, to the ship, where many of the 277 people who were initially on board.
The passersby tried to see the ship from behind the police barricades. Throughout the day, a constant flow of visitors, mostly Mexican migrants residing in New York, arrived to present their respects, and some left flowers at the entrance of the dock.
Roque Anaya, 42, had traveled with his family from Rhode Island to New York on Friday to see the ship he had learned at school when he was a child in Hidalgo, Mexico. He had climbed on board to take a tour, had taken pictures with his family and talked to the sailors who made the trip.
“Right now many things happen to me: will it stay here, will return to Mexico?” Said Anaya. “They will have to fix it.”
The Anaya family had returned to the scene of the accident on Sunday to check the status of the ship.
“It’s a bit heartbreaking,” said Jessica Anaya, her daughter, while containing tears.
On Sunday night, a small group celebrated a vigil at the dock, depositing bouquets of flowers on the ground, lighting candles and hanging a rosary and a small image of a Virgin Mary in a fence. The organizer of La Vigilia, Maria Mejia, said that the local Mexico community was “shattered” because the accident had transformed the visit of the ship of a celebration into a tragedy.
“We were full of love, full of pride,” Mejía said. “We couldn’t believe it.”
The Commander of the Navy of Mexico, Admiral Raymundo Pedro Morales Ángeles, said in a statement on Sunday that the unharmed cadets would continue their training and that the investigation into the accident would be carried out “with total transparency and responsibility.”
“We know that every navigation leg entails risks inherent to our marine vocation,” said Admiral Morales Ángeles.
An official of the Navy of Mexico who spoke on condition of anonymity for not being authorized to grant interviews said that the Cuauhtémoc would undergo an inspection process and that the fate of the ship would not be determined until a technical report was available.
The Navy of Mexico said in a statement that the Cuauhtémoc had sailed on April 6 of Acapulco in a mission with the objective of “exalting the sailor spirit, strengthening naval education and bringing the message of peace and good will of the Mexican people to the seas and ports of the world”.
The ship planned to spend 254 days making scales in New York; Kingston, Jamaica; Havana; Reykiavik, Iceland; Aberdeen, Scotland; Aviles, Spain; Bridgetown, Barbados; and London.
The ship – a steel helmet and three masts – was built in Bilbao, Spain, in 1981 and was acquired by the Mexican government the following year to use it as a school ship in its heroic military naval school. Last year he won the Boston Tepot trophy, an annual international award that is granted to the Vela School that travels the greatest distance in five days.
In his Sunday press conference, Schumer wondered aloud if the cuts and freezing of the hiring initiated by Donald Trump’s government in the Coast Guard had played some role in Saturday’s incident. He compared the control operations of the Coast Guard Watersheds with the air traffic control tasks of the Federal Aviation Administration.
“We know that there has been Trump government interference in the provision of Coast Guard personnel,” he said, “and now we need to know how this interference may have influenced the events last night from the point of view of command, communication and local coordination.”
At the end of Sunday afternoon, dozens of people dressed as civilians had begun to take backpacks, canvas bags and other luggage from the ship. Later, more than one hundred members of the crew landed with their luggage and climbed into vans that were waiting for them.
The spokesman for the Emergency Management Office said the ship would remain at the 36th dock, but that a plan was being formulated to transfer it to a nearby shipyard. The crew members who were leaving the ship would be provided with an urban bus service to Kennedy airport with police escort, said the spokesman.
Rodolfo Hernández, uncle of Sánchez Hernández, told journalists on Sunday that his niece had sent photos in which he appeared in Central Park the day before the accident.
“I was very happy, that he was going to Iceland,” he said. When the news of his death arrived, he added, they collapsed, “we had no strength to endure it.”
One of her friends, Naysin Tejeda, published photos and a memory of the cadet on Facebook on Sunday morning.
“My beautiful girl, last night we wanted it to be a lie and hurts us in the heart that you will not be in this world. You were doing what you loved most,” said the publication. “We are proud to get where you wanted, to know NY.”