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The captain of a tugboat that collided with an 800-foot tanker in a Port Arthur ship channel in January says his radio calls to the larger ship went unanswered moments before the crash.
Capt. Lex Wimberley says he tried to contact the tanker Eagle Otome after he saw it drop anchor and heard its distress alarm, but no one answered.
The U.S. Coast Guard and the National Transportation Safety Board are holding a formal hearing into the Jan. 23 collision that caused the worst oil spill in Texas in 15 years. No one was injured, but 462,000 gallons of crude oil spilled into the waterway.
The tanker's pilots and captain have testified they didn't contact the tugboat to inform it of problems they were encountering in the narrow Sabine-Neches Waterway channel they were sailing through.
(Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
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