Seattle Injury Lawyer Blog

Kitsap Transit’s research ferry Rich Passage 1 ran aground Monday while en route to the Port of Port Townsend to be hauled out of the water for winter maintenance. There were three people onboard at the time of the allision.

The vessel nosed onto the beach while going through narrow Hadlock Cut between Indian Island and the Jefferson County mainland after going on the wrong side of the channel marker. The captain tried to back off the beach, but the boat didn’t easily break free, so he shut it down to prevent sucking anything into the water jets. Officials expect to refloat the vessel at high tide today.

Coast Guard experts inspected the boat and didn’t find any damage other than some scraped paint.

Oil-tanker traffic in Washington waters is set to increase under a proposal floated by Canadian energy giant Kinder Morgan.

The company earlier this month announced that so much interest was expressed by potential customers in long-term purchase contracts for Canadian tar-sands oil that it is bumping up the proposed expansion of its Trans Mountain Pipeline announced last year.

The company said this month it wants to increase its pipeline capacity from 750,000 barrels per day announced last April to 890,000 barrels per day.

The Tacoma Fire Department, U.S. Coast Guard and Washington Department of Ecology are responding to the sinking of two abandoned vessels moored at Mason Marina on the Hylebos Waterway near Tacoma early today.

The abandoned Helena Star and Golden West were chained together when they sank Friday morning. Officials say the boats are derelicts – 167 and 130 feet long – that were intended to be dismantled.

Oil containment boom has been placed around both vessels to prevent possible pollution from any residual fuel that may remain inside. Most of the fuel was removed from the vessels last March, limiting the potential for pollution to the waterway from these vessels.

State lawmakers may reconsider the law that requires new ferries to be built in Washington.

An audit suggested ferries could be built cheaper at shipyards out of state. The audit, which cost $1.2 million and took a year to complete, is the subject of a legislative hearing today in Olympia.

The audit was designed to answer the following questions:

Coast Guard crews are searching for a missing 56-year-old fisherman who went overboard early today in the Pacific Ocean off the Olympic Peninsula, eight miles west of the Queets River.

The man, reportedly not wearing a lifejacket, fell overboard from the fishing boat Senja about 1:30 a.m. today eight miles northwest of Cape Elizabeth, which is north of Ocean Shores.

A Coast Guard helicopter from Astoria, Ore., and a 47-foot motor lifeboat from Westport were searching for the missing man in 48-degree water, with six-foot waves and five-knot winds.

A commuter ferry packed with 326 passengers and five crewmembers crashed into a dock at Manhattan’s Pier 11, near Wall Street around 8:45 a.m. Wednesday, injuring 74. At least two were critically injured, one of whom was rushed to surgery with severe head trauma and bleeding after falling down a flight of stairs. Nine people were in serious condition.

Aerial footage showed people strapped to stretchers, their heads and necks immobilized, with emergency response crews swarming the ferry and surrounding areas.

The force of the crash tossed some morning commuters in the air and sent others tumbling down stairs, witnesses said. As investigators and officials, including New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, surveyed the damage, a large gash was visible in the ferry’s starboard bow.