One tugboat crew member was killed and two others are missing after a tugboat traveling the Hudson River in NY slammed into a construction barge anchored beneath the Tappan Zee Bridge.
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First notification of the collision was received at 5:20 a.m. Saturday shortly after the 84-foot tugboat “Specialist” struck the barge and sank with three people aboard.
Cuomo also says the tugboat leaked at least five-thousand gallons of fuel into the Hudson River. The tugboat Specialist was part from three tugs transporting a barge with construction equipment down the Hudson River, but at some point veered from the designated channel and crashed into the stationed construction barge. the tug capsized and sank for a few minutes, without giving time for reaction of the crew members to abandon.
Workers were on the barge, part of the $4 billion project to rebuild the Tappan Zee Bridge.
The bridge connects New York’s Westchester and Rockland counties. In 2013, a boat crash killed Lindsey Stewart, a bride to be, and Mark Lennon, the best man of Lindsey’s fiancee. No one on that barge was injured.
Law enforcement officers were using sonar technology to find the tugboat at the bottom of the river, Cuomo said. Environmental agencies, including the New York Department of Environmental Conservation, are on the scene to manage the oil spill. Crews were again searching the waters near the Tappan Zee at 10 a.m. Sunday. The two other tugboats, Realist and Trevor, were not involved in the crash.
The governor says he spent some time with the family of 29-year-old Timothy Conklin, of Westbury, Long Island, New York, whose body was recovered late Sunday morning. It is believed that the construction workers were aware that they were about to be hit by the tugboat and they braced for the impact.
James Mercante, an attorney representing the owner of the sunken tugboat, has come out to comment on the tragedy.
A spokeswoman for Tappan Zee Constructors, a consortium of companies building the new bridge, said the company is cooperating in the investigation.
One person is dead and two more are missing after authorities say a tugboat overturned and sunk on New York’s Hudson River following a collision with a barge north of New York City.
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Boats of emergency officials work near the site of a fatal collision in the water underneath the Tappan Zee Bridge in Tarrytown, N.Y., Saturday, March 12, 2016. It was built in 1954, according to the U.S. Coast Guard registration.
