Stranded Ferry Passengers Rescued After Hours In Frigid Weather

JAMAICA BAY, QUEENS -- A ferry boat carrying 27 people hit a sandbar and got stuck for hours on Wednesday night, prompting an evacuation from the frigid waters near Rockaway Beach.

No injuries were reported in the NYC Ferry Service stranding, but rescuing the vessel's 23 passengers and four crew members proved a time consuming effort, an FDNY spokesman said.

FDNY got a call at around 6: 07 p.m. that the ferry, which had just left the Rockaway terminal less than an hour earlier, had run aground on a sandbar in Jamaica Bay while en route to Wall Street's Pier 11, authorities said. The ferry was only about 15 minutes into the trip when it got stuck on the sandbar and became unable to move, police said.

Waters were too shallow for a boat to rescue the stranded passengers, resulting in an hourslong effort to get them to safety, a FDNY spokesman said. Passengers waited aboard the boat as temperatures dipped into the low 20s, with wind chill as low as 6 degrees, according to the National Weather Service.

Eventually, the FDNY was able to offload passengers from the ferry onto dinghies, which sent them to a larger rescue vessel - their biggest marine boat, a spokesman said. Passengers were taken to the Brooklyn Army Terminal in Sunset Park, according to the FDNY.

The entire rescue took nearly five hours to complete, with FDNY reporting the situation under control at around 11 p.m. The ferry was scheduled to be towed overnight, police said.

It is unclear what led the ferry - a city-sponsored but privately run service - to run aground, FDNY authorities said. The ferry company, Hornblower Inc., did not immediately return calls for comment.

Lead photo by Mark Lennihan/Associated Press

Caption: Passengers on board a NYC Ferry watch as the boat departs Sunset Park, Brooklyn for Rockaway, Queens during the ferry's inauguration on May 1, 2017.