September 28, 2016 | No Comments
Following the death of baseball player Jose Fernandez, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio is calling on the Coast Guard and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to investigate the safety of the Miami Beach jetty into which Fernandez’s boat crashed on Sunday.
The Miami Marlins pitcher, 24, and two of his friends died after the early-morning collision.
Citing his own experience as a boater, Rubio told Admiral Paul F. Zukunft and Assistant Army Secretary Jo-Ellen Darcy in a letter Wednesday that the jetty, near a Government Cut channel, is challenging to navigate and has been described as “hard to see at night.” He asked them to make an assessment and then make recommendations for how to improve safety for boaters.
“Florida is home to numerous jetties, which serve an important role in guiding boat traffic, protecting coastlines and preventing sand from entering channels. These structures must be maintained to ensure they remain functional as well as safe,” wrote Rubio, a Republican former presidential candidate who is up for re-election this fall. “Recent reports from a tragic and fatal accident have called into question the visibility of a specific jetty in Miami Beach.”