'Miracle on the Mississippi': all 129 passengers rescued after tanker hits river cruise boat in New Orleans

All 129 passengers aboard a Mississippi river cruise boat were accounted for on Friday after a tanker struck the vessel in New Orleans, partially submerging it and sending people into the river. Thirty-two passengers were taken to hospital, none of them with critical injuries.

The Atlantic Asphalt tanker hit the American Heritage paddleboat on the Mississippi River at about 12:30pm local time (18:30 GMT), the Port of New Orleans said. The cruise boat had docked about two hours earlier to begin letting passengers off at the end of its voyage.

New Orleans Mayor Helena Moreno told a news conference on Friday evening that every passenger on board had been accounted for and that 32 were in local hospitals. The Atlantic Asphalt tanker "lost control and collided into the cruise ship", she said.

Passengers were disembarking when the boat "began to sink, and then eventually toppled over and flipped", sending people into the water, the mayor said. Video from the scene showed the much larger tanker hitting the paddlewheel cruise boat as metal and glass crashed and crunched, according to The Associated Press.

Fifteen minutes from impact to capsize

Witnesses described a scene that went from routine to terrifying in minutes. "Surreal, that's what that was," one witness, Jamie Holford, told local television. "Fifteen minutes from impact to where it rolled over."

The American Heritage is a five-deck paddleboat built in 2015 that holds up to 150 passengers. It was finishing an eight-day cruise to destinations in Louisiana and Mississippi, and many of those aboard had already gathered their belongings and were preparing to step ashore when the tanker struck.

The force of the collision pushed the smaller vessel against the riverfront, and as water poured in, the boat listed further and further into the river. Passengers near the railing watched the deck tilt beneath them, while others were thrown into the water as the vessel rolled.

The speed of the capsize left little time for an orderly evacuation. Crew members and passengers scrambled for life jackets as the boat went over, and the riverfront, normally a place of leisurely arrivals and departures, became the scene of a major rescue operation within minutes.

The rescue on the river

More than a dozen people in life jackets were dragged from the river, where the water temperature was 19 degrees Celsius (66 degrees Fahrenheit), onto nearby ships, while others stood near the railing as the boat listed further into the water.

Port police, the fire department, the coastguard and emergency medical staff rushed to the scene, and a triage area was set up inside the port's administration building. The river was closed to vessel traffic while rescue boats worked around the partially submerged cruise boat.

The fact that nobody was killed, and that none of the 32 people taken to hospital was critically hurt, was described by local officials and witnesses as remarkable given the scale of the collision. The mayor's confirmation that all passengers were accounted for came after hours in which the fate of people last seen in the water had been uncertain.

American Cruise Lines, which operates the boat, said guests and crew had been evacuated and that the company was "deeply concerned for everyone involved". The company did not immediately say what support it would offer passengers, many of whom lost personal belongings when the boat went down.

What is known about the two vessels

The tanker involved is 160 metres (520 feet) long and was flying the flag of the Marshall Islands. It was bound for New Orleans, according to the MarineTraffic tracker, and specialises in carrying asphalt and bitumen, according to the maritime periodical Marine Insights.

The cause of the collision, as well as whether the tanker was carrying cargo at the time, remains unknown. Investigators from the coastguard and the National Transportation Safety Board are expected to examine the tanker's bridge records, its steering and engine systems, and the movements of both vessels in the minutes before impact.

Collisions on the Mississippi are rare but not unheard of, and the river at New Orleans is one of the busiest stretches of inland waterway in the United States, carrying ocean-going ships, barges and passenger vessels through a narrow, fast-moving channel.

For the passengers of the American Heritage, what had been a leisurely cruise through the Deep South ended in the water, in life jackets, in front of television cameras. That all of them survived is the one clear fact in a story whose causes will take weeks to establish.