Coast Guard exercise led to some weather broadcasts potentially not transmitting to El Faro

We’ve already learned El Faro apparently missed certain types of weather broadcasts in the day ahead of the sinking, and now, we’re getting a better idea of the issue that caused that.

WOKV has previously told you that the NTSB found certain voice broadcasts containing forecast information were not transmitted to El Faro as she was on her final voyage. Coast Guard Chief of Traveling Inspectors Commander Michael Crider told the Coast Guard Marine Board of Investigation that he can't confirm whether those messages were actually missed, or were sent through a different outpost.

NTSB: Details from factual reports on the investigation

Crider says, at the time, they were doing a “continuity of operations” exercise and training, which involved transferring control of assets from where they were located in Chesapeake, VA to another location.

“It’s not a Coast Guard operation, in that the Coast Guard is in control of transitioning services. It’s actually circuits that are owned or maintained- we lease the circuits from Verizon, and Verizon struggled in transitioning some of those services back and forth, so we had to restart it and pull it back,” Crider says.

He says there were continuity of operations taking place at the time that some of the potentially missed broadcasts were reported, so he couldn’t confirm if they were actually missed, or if they were logged as such, but transmitted through the independent operations at the other location.

FULL COVERAGE:  El Faro sinking

This voice broadcast system is one of only several ways El Faro was getting its weather data information, but it's also not the only one that had problems. One of the main systems- the Bon Voyage System, which takes forecast information and adds in wind and sea conditions- had a one-time glitch that resulted in El Faro getting a duplicated track of Hurricane Joaquin in the hours ahead of the sinking.

It's also not the only Coast Guard system that faced problems during this time frame. The search and rescue coordinator had issues with a system upgrade, which led to their computers sometimes locking up or losing data. As a result, the early search and rescue efforts were charted by hand.

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