PORT FOURCHON, La. (AP) – Divers looking for oil industry workers on a capsized lift boat ready to enter the ship Friday, a rescue complicated by daunting technical challenges and persistent bad weather.
The hope is that the 12 missing people have found bubbles to survive in the Seacor Power, most of which are submerged in 50-foot seas about 8 miles off the coast of Louisiana.
“Right now we are praying for a miracle,” said Steven Walcott, brother of missing employee Gregory Walcott.
Petty Officer 3rd Class Carlos Galarza said early Friday on Friday that, weather permitting, divers will attempt to get into the ship.
Two of the missing had communicated with rescue workers on two-way radio on Tuesday after the bulky platform ship turned into hurricane force that day. They were spotted clinging to the fallen hull, but returned to take shelter inside after a third man fell into the water and was lost. There have been no signs of life since then, officials said.
Time is of the essence because air bubbles eventually become depleted of oxygen, said Mauritius Bell, a diving safety officer at the California Academy of Sciences.
“It would be somewhat analogous to inhaling and exhaling a paper bag,” he added. “At some point it is impossible to survive.”
Survival may depend on the size of the bag. “The bigger the better, and it’s all about time,” said Bell.
On Thursday, searchers knocked on the hull without answer.
“There is the potential that they are still there, but we don’t know,” Petty Officer 2nd Class Jonathan Lally said Thursday. “We are still looking for 12 people because 12 more are missing.”
Relatives of the missing gathered at a fire station in Port Fourchon, a sprawling base for much of the Gulf of Mexico’s offshore oil and gas industry. The harbor, filled with cranes, cargo and heavy equipment, is where workers from all over Louisiana and beyond load a fleet of helicopters and ships that take them to the oil rigs for long stretches of work.
Marion Cuyler, engaged to crane operator Chaz Morales, hesitated between optimism and fear after relatives received briefings from Seacor executives and the Coast Guard. She said she believes all 12 of them are in the barrel.
“Hopefully they are all in one room and can save them all in one day,” she said.
The families expressed their frustration at the briefing and want answers to their questions about why the boat went out to sea despite warnings of an impending storm, she said.
“I asked, ‘Who gave the orders’ and of course – silence,” she said. Cuyler said she told her husband-to-be not to go out in such weather. “And he knew they shouldn’t have gone out.”
Walcott, who has also worked on lift boats, echoed that frustration with the circumstances. He said the boats are not designed to travel in rough weather.
Bell said it is fortunate that rescuers know the ship’s design.
“It’s not like they are diving into an old wreck that is dilapidated and falling apart,” he said. “One of the things you have for them, that’s to their advantage, is that it was a working boat, so you’d know the layout of the ship.”
Six people were rescued shortly after the ship capsized on Tuesday. The first Coast Guard ship arrived at the scene at 5:10 PM, about 40 minutes after the first distress call, and saw five men clinging to the hull, Galarza said.
A Bristow Marine Company helicopter crew lowered life jackets and two-way VHF radios to them, he said. Two of the men dropped into the water and were picked up by the coast guard. About the same time, ships of the Good Samaritan rescued four other people, he said.
The Coast Guard could talk on the radios to the three people still on the hull, but the sea was too rough to reach them. Later on Tuesday evening, the Coast Guard was notified that one person had fallen into the water and was no longer seen.
Shortly before 10 p.m., the two remaining people told the Coast Guard that they were going back in, and that was the last time the Coast Guard spoke to them, Galarza said.
On Thursday, a Coast Guard crew came within a few feet of the capsized ship and threw a hammer on the hull in an attempt to contact potential survivors, the agency said. If there was a response, they couldn’t hear it over the wind and engine noise, they said.
One person’s body was removed from the water on Wednesday as searchers searched an area roughly the size of Hawaii, the Coast Guard said. The Lafourche Parish Coroner’s Office identified him as David Ledet, 63, of Thibodaux – a town in southeastern Louisiana where many people work in the oil industry.
Martin contributed from Woodstock, Ga.