The USS Arizona Memorial will remain closed to visitors for several days after the hospital ship USNS Mercy collided with the memorial’s dock Wednesday morning, making it “not safe for people to land there,” a spokeswoman said.

The USNS Mercy hospital ship collided with the memorial’s mooring dock Wednesday morning, said Abby Wines, spokeswoman for the USS Arizona Memorial, which is part of the National Park Service. Wines had said Wednesday morning that it was a tug towing the Mercy that struck the dock, but corrected that information Wednesday afternoon.

“Initial visual assessments show that the dock was moved about 10 feet toward the Memorial,” a statement from the National Park Service said. “A small area of concrete was damaged where the dock’s ramp joined the Memorial. The dock’s ramps and railings were also damaged. 

Visitors were still being taken from the shore-side USS Arizona Memorial Visitor’s Center by Navy launch out to the memorial, which straddles the remains of the battleship that was destroyed by a Japanese aerial attack on Dec. 7, 1941, launching the United States into World War II. 

Because of the damaged dock, the Navy launches are not able to tie up to let visitors onto the memorial, Wines said.

“The National Park Service anticipates that it will be several days until visitor access to the USS Arizona Memorial can be safely resumed,” a statement issued in the early afternoon said.

USS Arizona Memorial superintendent Paul DePrey said in the news release, “We deeply regret the impact this will have on visitors’ experience, but we want to make sure that everyone has a safe visit. We will work closely with the Navy to resume access to the Memorial as soon as safety allows.” 

The Honolulu Star-Advertiser rode on a launch that took about five minutes to get within 100 to 200 yards of the memorial, but never docked. The launch cruised the waters for about seven minutes before making the five-minute trip back to the visitors’ center on shore.

“The rangers did a wonderful job telling us all about it,” visitor Faith Kreis of Portland, Ore., said after returning to shore. “The reasoning made a whole lot of sense. They just said there was an accident or something. The whole thing was about the safety factor.”

Wines said the collision occurred at 7:45 a.m. 

The Military Sealift Command hospital ship USNS Mercy arrived at Pearl Harbor on Monday for Pacific Partnership 2015, which the Navy calls the largest annual multilateral humanitarian assistance and disaster relief preparedness mission conducted in the Indio-Asia-Pacific region.

The park service said the Pearl Harbor Visitor Center and the Battleship Missouri Memorial, Pacific Aviation Museum, and the USS Bowfin Submarine remain open. More than 5,000 people visit the Pearl Harbor Historic sites daily, 4,350 of whom can take the boat to view the USS Arizona Memorial, officials said.