The third and final round of the US Coast Guard’s (USCG) Marine Board of Investigation (MBI) hearings into the El Faro disaster will begin in Jacksonville, Florida, on Monday.
The hearing is expected to last two weeks and will include data gathered from the voyage data recorder (VDR) of the cargo vessel, which sank with the loss of all 33 crew members on October 1, 2015.
It went down when caught in Hurricane Joaquin off the Bahamas while en route from Jacksonville to San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Transcripts of the VDR audio recordings from the ship’s final hours were released in December 2016.
Apart from information gleaned from the VDR, this hearing will also consider company and coast guard officials and crew witnesses.
Two previous MBI hearings, also in Jacksonville, looked into other aspects of the El Faro tragedy.
