Almost 600 rescued in RP ship incident
Almost 600 rescued in RP ship incident
MANILA (Reuters): Almost 600 survivors were plucked from rough
seas after a Philippine ship packed with passengers returning
home for Christmas sank shortly before dawn on Thursday.
Officials said 591 people had been rescued, nine were dead and
58 were still missing by 6 p.m. (5 p.m. Jakarta time), about 13
hours after the accident in the Visayan Sea in the central
Philippines.
"While there were those who perished, the biggest Christmas
gift from above was that the casualties were not of previous
proportions," Defense Secretary Orlando Mercado told Reuters.
The Philippines, an archipelagic nation where sea transport is
widely used, has a poor maritime record. In 1987, some 4,300
people were killed when a ferry collided with an oil tanker near
Manila in the world's worst peacetime sea disaster.
That accident also took place in the week before Christmas,
when people in this Roman Catholic nation jam airports, bus
stations and ports looking to get home for the celebrations.
"December is the season wherein some people are a little lax
about their travel plans and the vessels about their
maintenance... They might have been taking too many chances
during the Christmas season," Mercado said.
"There's also this eagerness on our part to go home. This is
part of the danger.
"The problem usually is old, creaky and unseaworthy ships
compounded by overloading and a lack of compliance with safety
measures, which are poor to start with."
The MV Asia South Korea, carrying 606 passengers and 52 crew
from the central city of Cebu to Iloilo, left on Wednesday night
on what should have been a 12-hour voyage.
It sank off Bantayan Island, 500 km southeast of Manila, at 5
a.m. after being buffeted by high waves, Mercado said.
A massive rescue operation was immediately launched. Naval
ships, other merchant vessels, helicopters and fishing boats
converged on the area, plucking people from the water.
"They can still hear people calling...they won't leave until
they pick everyone up," said Andriano Afuego, a civil defense
official in Cebu.
Television footage showed people bobbing in the sea with
bright orange life-vests strapped around their chests as
motorboats moved in.
Soaked and shivering survivors clambered on to rescue vessels.
Many women and children were rescued from lifeboats while those
in life-jackets and in the sea were mostly men.
Officials said the sea was rough at the accident site, some 10
nautical miles from Bantayan Island, and that rescue operations
would continue into the night.
"Even at this point and time the search and rescue operations
are still ongoing," said William Acosta, vice president of
operations for Trans-Asia Shipping, the ship's owner.
"We have dispatched more vessels through coordination with
other shipping companies...within this area. We are just thankful
to the Lord that all our efforts were quite successful at this
time."
Trans-Asia said the vessel underwent extensive seaworthiness
checks in September.
Coast Guard Commander Franklin Llanto said departure clearance
at Cebu was delayed "because when we conducted pre-departure
inspection, we found out that there were excess passengers, about
80 or more than 80 of them".
He said the ship had a licensed capacity for 614 passengers
and the excess passengers were off-loaded.
Despite frequent sea disasters, ferries remain the most
popular means of long-haul transport in this largely impoverished
archipelago of more than 7,000 islands because fares are cheaper
than air travel.