A fatal boat crash closed the Port of Miami for about 12 hours over the weekend.
A 32-foot center console hit the Pelican 11, a Fisher Island ferry, about 3 a.m. on Sunday. (A sistership is pictured.) The boat then sank in the north channel near Dodge Island. The ferry crew pulled one man, Angel Dominguez, 29, from the water. He said his friend, Cristian Gaston Fernandez, 27, had also been on the boat and was missing.
Miami Fire-Rescue workers found Fernandez’ body in the water. Dominguez was taken to a trauma center in serious condition. No one on the ferry was injured.
After the accident, the Coast Guard closed the port so it could remove the sunken boat, which could have been an obstruction in one of the busiest cruise-line ports in the U.S.
As a result, about 17,000 passengers on three cruise liners were left circling in the Atlantic for half a day; Sunday is when the liners land and discharge one group of passengers and board another.
At the same time, another 17,000 people were left on land, waiting for their ships to come in. The Coast Guard reopened the port about 2:30 p.m. after divers had recovered the sunken center console.
The ferry runs from the upscale resort of Fishers Island to a terminal on MacArthur Causeway, linking Miami Beach and Miami.
The Coast Guard is investigating the cause of the accident.
Read more at https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/25/us/fisher-island-ferry-accident-miami/index.html
and see the video below:
