FAA orders rare nationwide ground stop due to communication issue

A riverboat with over 100 passengers was struck Friday in New Orleans by a much larger tanker ship, capsizing the cruise vessel and prompting a major rescue effort in the Mississippi River.

The American Heritage ship, managed by American Cruise Lines, was T-boned by the tanker while docked near the French Quarter, a spokesperson said in a statement.

Thirty-two passengers were hospitalized in the collision, though none of those injuries were critical, New Orleans Mayor Helena Moreno told reporters.

All of the passengers had been accounted for, she said.

Moreno called that fact “a miracle on the Mississippi.”

The cause of the crash was unclear and remained under investigation, Moreno said.

The U.S. Coast Guard and National Transportation Safety Board will conduct that investigation. The transportation officials were delayed in making their way to the Crescent City because of the ground stop at airports across the nation, officials said.

There were nearly 130 passengers on board the Heritage, which had been docked in the port for about two hours before the incident, NBC affiliate WDSU reported.

Officials said the tanker lost control and collided with the riverboat at 12:30 p.m. in the Port of New Orleans, one of the nation’s largest ports. While passengers were disembarking, the riverboat began to sink and flipped, Moreno said.

“When that occurred, we started to have people in the water,” she said.

She described the effort to rescue those passengers as an “all hands on deck approach.” The American Heritage, which had been set to embark on a seven-day cruise to Mississippi, eventually capsized.

Video and images verified by NBC News show a number of people wearing life jackets in the water near the site of the crash.

A passenger who was on the riverboat told NBC News that she had to crawl to safety after the collision.

“After the initial crash, it hit us again and we flipped over and I had to crawl over the railing and people to save myself,” Rhonda Akers said.

Akers said her husband was hospitalized with a head injury and she was waiting to see him.

A 3-mile stretch of the river was closed to traffic while responders assessed the situation. A Coast Guard official told reporters that authorities were working to reopen the waterway as soon as possible.

Atlantic Asphalt, the tanker that struck the cruise vessel, is based in the Marshall Islands and is owned by Chinese and Liberian companies, according to public records.

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