Tag Archives: Coast Guard hearings
Mystery surrounds alarm failure on sunken Alaska Juris, a siren that could “wake the dead”
When water first began flooding into the Alaska Juris on July 26, a network of bilge alarms should have unleashed a cacophony of sound to alert the crew that something was wrong. “The siren can wake the dead. Anywhere on the vessel you can hear the alarm,” said Ben Eche, an electrician who did shore-side work on that alert system, in testimony Tuesday during Coast Guard hearings in Seattle into the sinking of the vessel. All 46 crew members survived. But crew testified the alarm did not go off, a troubling development that prompted Coast Guard officials to question Eche about how the system operated. Eche said he had tested the alarm system while the Alaska Juris was in port, and it worked properly. Read the story here, and watch the proceedings here 11:36
Crew of Alaska Juris abandoned their sinking ship on a mild summer day: Coast Guard hearings begin
When Jonathan Jensen boarded the Alaska Juris last summer for his first stint at sea as a fishery observer, he learned early on that an alarm was supposed to sound should the crew ever need to evacuate. But on July 26, off Alaska’s Aleutian Islands, there was no such emergency signal — indeed, no electricity — as engine-room flooding cut the power and forced the crew to abandon the Washington-based factory trawler. Instead, he says the 46 crew members were forced to rely on word-of-mouth that they all were to assemble on deck, don survival suits and climb into life rafts. “The captain was doing his best to keep it lighthearted and us calm,” Jensen recalls. “He said, ‘When we get back on land, the first round is on me.’ ” Just what caused the flooding — and sinking — of the 229-foot Alaska Juris on a relatively calm summer day in the Bering Sea has not been determined, and will be investigated during two weeks of Coast Guard hearings that begin Monday in Seattle. Read the rest here 21:26
