hospital for evaluation, because some of the deck hands actually helped to lower the bridge to brace the impact as the boat came in too fast into the slip. apparently, the deck hands this is what we re hearing from callers to the newspaper. the deck hands sort of jumped to the scene and lowered the bridge to brace the boat and lessen the impact. okay. so now i m trying to figure out what that would be in terms of lowering the bridge. you being there on staten island, i m sure you use the ferry more frequently than i do. that would be to basically create an impact to keep the ferry from going further into the terminal? yeah, there is a bridge that gets lowered as the ferry docks into the slip. a bridge is lowered to connect the terminal to the boat. and apparently this bridge was used this was what one of the callers told us, about a deck hand who participated and tried to brace the impact or lessen the impact of the boat. claire, are you hearing what was reported over the lou
crash last july, a different boat, and that was because of a power failure. and there are reports that may indeed be the case on this one, as well. of course, new york officials have yet to confirm anything at this point. but i want to confirm what you re saying, as well, claire, with regard to the number of injuries. we re getting a source here that says 37. that concurs with the number you have, and the number may pluck ate, but all injuries are minor, with the exception of one, which is being called as you described it, nonlife threatening. so we re absolutely backing up your obviously excellent reporting there from on-scene. and alex, i can tell you there were 252 passengers on board this 9:00 a.m. boat out of the white hall terminal. okay. thank you for that detail, as well. claire reagan from the staten island advance. thanks, claire. you re welcome. that is our top story right now. we ll take a short break and see if we can get some more information, and put in other n
keeping up with our focus on this breaking news from the staten island side of the new york harbor, where the new york ferry there has slammed into the dock of the st. george terminal. we re told 252 people were on board and some 35 or so have had had some minor injuries. one serious injury. we presume has been taken to the hospitality point. this all went down almost two hours ago now. there s a little bit of bad weather there, but we have been speaking with nbc meteorologist bill karins. that should not have had any effect on the ability of that ferry to safely transverse the new york harbor from the lower tip of manhattan to staten island. i m joined right now on the phone by claire reagan. she is from the staten island, associate managing editor there. claire, good morning, what are you hearing? good morning, alex. well, we re hearing at this point about 37 injuries, mostly head and neck injuries. ooh.
so we don t have to worry about waves. there are bad currents out there, but these ferry operators go back and forth this route hundreds and thousands of times a year, so that s not an issue. you can see the rain moved in and then out. i think alex, just being a novice boater myself, the interesting thing is they knew it was about to happen, they said brake, brake and of course boats can t brake, they throw it in reverse or neutral. and it sounds like they knew this was going to happen and that makes it sounds like it was more mechanical than anything else. they quickly went to throttle down, and then, you know, slow it down and throw it back, the boat didn t respond for whatever reason. right. whether it was mechanical or human error, and, of course, we have to remind people, the reason why we re particularly sensitive to accidents like this. back in october of 2003, ten people were killed when the staten island ferry crashed into the st. george terminal there. and the