A congressional subcommittee on Wednesday will probe the cause of the slow US Coast Guard response to the sinking of a fishing boat off Gloucester in January 2008, an accident that killed the two fishermen aboard the Gloucester-based Patriot.
The House Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation will hold a hearing titled "A Review of the Coast Guard’s Search and Rescue Mission” in Washington, D.C. Coast Guard Commandant for Operations Rear Admiral Sally Brice-O’Hara is slated to testify.
A Coast Guard commander conceded in June that his agency was slow in responding to the sinking boat, but said that the vessel went down quickly and the two men who died probably could not have been saved.
The Patriot sank with little warning around 1:30 a.m. on Jan 3, 2008, Vice Admiral Robert J. Papp Jr., commander of the Coast Guard’s Atlantic Area, said in June. The official Coast Guard report said fishermen Matteo Russo and John Orlando drowned immediately, and there was likely nothing that could have been done to save them.
Read the complete story at The Boston Globe.