Search continues for missing oil rig workers

PORT FOURCHON, La.— Coast Guard helicopters have resumed searching for 11 workers missing since a thunderous blast aboard an oil platform off the Louisiana coast.

The air search resumed this morning, not long after some of the 100 surviving workers were reunited with their families at a hotel in suburban New Orleans.

The rig, where exploratory drilling was being done about 50 miles off the coast of Louisiana, exploded late Tuesday. Seventeen people were injured in the blast and taken to hospitals, four critically, in what could be one of the nation’s deadliest offshore drilling accidents of the past half-century.

The rig is owned by Transocean Ltd. and was under contract to oil giant BP.