NYC Ferry Passengers Forced To Call 911 After Getting Stuck On Sandbar

After a New York City ferry got stuck on a sandbar near Pier 11, off the Wall Street on Monday, the passengers had to call the emergency services as the authorities took no steps to call for a replacement boat.

The ferry, which got caught in a “concrete”-like sandbar, made of construction soot and old pylons, around 5:15 p.m. EST, reportedly did not back out along the pier and then turn around in the deeper water, as ferries usually do.

“This one pulled straight out and right onto (the sandbar). That’s where they got into trouble,” one of the workers at the ferry said, New York Daily News reported. The ferry had 114 passengers and six crew members aboard at the time.

After being stranded close to an hour on the ferry, the authorities told the passengers to put on their life vests. Until that time, they were not informed of the situation or updated on how they planned to resolve the issues. Even after that, none of the officials took the initiative to call the emergency services even then.

“We had to call,” Beth Ward, one of the passengers on the ferry, said. “The passengers called 911. We tried to find out what was happening and no one was giving us any answers.”

Pepita Martindale, another passenger on the ferry said: “It was really frustrating because no information was being passed on to us. When they took us to put on the life vest, that part was very scary because we didn’t know how we were getting across to the pier.”

It should have taken the ferry officials so long to figure out the vessel’s condition, according to Luke Miszczuk, a passenger onboard at the time. “It started trembling and a little bit after that the captain said we are stuck in the mud,” Miszczuk said. “He really tried to gear it up and move the boat but it wasn’t going to move. There was a little bit of a smell of gas.”

However, not all the passengers were infuriated at being stuck for 45 minutes without any answers. “We were crowded. We were hungry. It was wonderful. This is New York,” Leslie Mahoney, one of the passengers aboard the ferry, said.

Anthony Hogrebe of the city Economic Development Corp. defended Zelinsky (the name of the ferry), saying: “It’s a boat our operator has used in the past without incident.” Zelinsky was built in 1986 by Hornblower and sold by the Blue & Gold fleet out of San Francisco in 2017 because it was near the end of its useful life.

The New York City ferry service, which has been heavily promoted by the mayor of the city Bill de Blasio, has had to face a number of setbacks in the last few months. One of the recent ones was the docking of three more ferry boats on Monday after it was discovered that their keel coolers had not been properly aligned, which had led to "some corrosion" on the hull, local news PIX 11 reported.

“This is a minor issue affecting three boats. It hasn’t impacted service and it won’t cost the City a penny to fix. Regular inspections caught it early and solved it quickly, which means the system is working,” Hogrebe said in a statement regarding the incident.

Regarding the incident involving Zelinsky, Melissa Grace, a spokeswoman for Mayor de Blasio said, “We are glad all passengers were safely disembarked and regret the inconvenience.”