- About 50 people were injured when a rush-hour ferry packed with commuters, which set out from New Jersey, smashed into a pier in New York City on Wednesday, firefighters said.
- The accident took place at 8:45 am (EST) on Pier 11 in the East River in lower Manhattan, not far from Wall Street, the New York Fire Department said, according to AFP.
- "We are assessing 50 patients on the scene right now. We don't know what kind of injuries they have," an NYFD spokeswoman said.
- Witnesses said the ferry, which was carrying about 300 people, was going too quickly when it approached the pier, perhaps resulting in the hard docking. A coast guard spokesman, Charles Rowe, said earlier that the cause of the accident was not yet known.
- Police and firefighters were on the scene and evacuated the injured on stretchers, television images showed. Other passengers were covered in blankets and awaiting assistance on the pier. Television images showed a large gash in the hull of the vessel.
- A man who was on the ferry described to CNN the jarring and abrupt halt on impact, saying, "basically it was 60 to zero...Usually it slows down a little bit, (and) people get up to get off the boat," he continued. "People went flying...people got thrown down the stairs. That’s how most of the people got hurt."
Another passenger, Elizabeth Banta described the scene as well, saying, "There was a large jolt…It felt like we were in a car crash...Several people were thrown into the air and onto the ground."
The National Transportation Safety Board says it's sending a team to investigate the incident.