Health emergency, illness spelled long waits for holiday ferry travelers

Update: Washington State Ferries has announced that the Tahlequah-Point Defiance run is expected to re-open on Friday once dock repairs are completed.

The night of Saturday, Dec. 24, proved difficult for ferry travelers after a ferry captain suffered a health emergency on the south-end ferry and a worker at the north end needed to be replaced because of illness.

On Monday, Washington State Ferries (WSF) spokesman Ian Sterling said the captain is expected to survive, but because of health privacy laws he did not have further details.

He called the evening — Christmas Eve and the first night of Hanukkah — a “perfect storm” of events, which led to hours-long waits for hundreds of ferry travelers in this area. He noted the situation will be fully evaluated once staff members return from the holiday.

“We will go back and take another look at it and see how we can keep it from happening in the future,” he said.

An email from WSF forwarded to State Sen. Sharon Nelson indicates that on Saturday evening, a ferry worker on the Sealth, serving the triangle route, needed to be relieved at 5 p.m. because of illness and that dispatch could not find a replacement. Because of Coast Guard regulations, the boat could not sail without sufficient crew. Additionally, the email noted that overtime regulations prohibit crew from working more than 12 hours in a row.

Meanwhile, at Vashon’s south end, at about 6:30 p.m., a longtime captain suffered a health emergency on the Chetzemoka. Without a replacement captain, the crew wasn’t available to serve on another route, the email stated.

On Monday, Sterling said that when the captain collapsed, he fell onto the controls, which caused the ferry to pull away from the Point Defiance dock while it was still tied up. Damage was so significant that the captain needed to be transported to the ambulance on shore via a rescue boat.

That situation drew a lot of the system’s resources that evening, he said, noting that Lynne Griffith, who heads WSF, was involved, and many workers were assigned mandatory overtime to complete as many sailings as possible on the north end.

Repair crews were dispatched to Point Defiance almost immediately, he added, but their efforts were complicated by the holidays and the inability to get parts quickly. On Tuesday morning, they were still at work, trying to make the dock serviceable.

Sterling noted that Gov. Inslee had tasked Griffith with ending trip cancellations because of insufficient crew, and in the 26 months she has led the system, they have decreased nearly 70 percent from the previous 26 months. Still, he said, such cancellations, including those on Dec. 24, are difficult for everyone involved.

“This was highly frustrating, and the timing could not have been worse,” he added.

Coming up, Nelson said she will debrief with Griffith about the recent events, but added that the picture is complicated.

She noted that WSF would benefit from additional funding to help build flux into the system to better address problems like Saturday’s — but does not expect funds to be allocated soon.

“I do not see it happening under the current control of the senate,” she said.