Saturday, May 8, 2010
According to the New York Police Department (NYPD), New York City’s Staten Island Ferry has crashed into a passenger terminal, causing over 60 injuries. The New York Fire Department (NYFD) reports to the press that they are on the scene and are giving emergency treatment.
No life-threatening injuries have been reported, although a few of the passengers were transported by the NYFD to local city hospitals. The accident is still under investigation by the NYPD. In all, 252 passengers were aboard the ship, along with eighteen various crew members.
According to some of the passengers that were on the ship, the boat sped up right before hitting the dock, when it should have actually been slowing down so that it could let passengers on from the station. An early report of the investigation is that the captain of the ship mistakenly lost engine control.
The Staten Island Ferry is a major form of transportation between the two New York city boroughs of Manhattan and Staten Island. Five different ships carry approximately 60,000 passengers each day across the New York Harbor.
The ship, the Andrew J. Barberi, was also involved in another crash in 2003, where it crashed into the same dock and killed eleven people.