110 missing after ferry disaster
Friday, February 03, 2012 - 08:34 AM
A day after nearly 250 survivors were rescued when a ferry sank off Papua New Guinea, crews searching for more than 110 missing people have found no further survivors.
Many of the missing may still be in the vessel, which is now at the bottom of the sea.
The MV Rabaul Queen sank yesterday in rough seas, and big waves and strong winds have continued to make rescue efforts difficult.
There were no reports of any more survivors by late today local time and no bodies have been found.
However, Captain Nurur Rahman, rescue co-ordinator for the National Maritime Safety Authority (NMSA), said he had not given up hope.
“I do not presume them to be dead yet,” he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
Rony Naigu, an NMSA official, told ABC about 100 people are thought to have been trapped inside when the ship was hit by three large waves and sank.
“The sea was really rough, windy, big waves. The boat tilted once, then twice, then three times and it went over,” said Alice Kakamara, who was recovering in a Lea hospital after inhaling toxins during the sinking.
“There was oil everywhere,” she said.
Ms Kakamara said she might not have survived had she not been with her 11-year-old nephew, who urged her not to give up. They found a lifeboat, but it too was sinking. She said she put the boy on another boat and has heard from relatives that he is well.
The ferry’s owners, Papua New Guinea-based Rabaul Shipping Company, said there had been 350 passengers and 12 crew aboard the 22-year-old Japanese-built ferry when it went down while travelling from Kimbe on the island of New Britain to the coastal city of Lae on the main island. A police official said most of those aboard were students.
“We are stunned and utterly devastated by what has happened,” managing director Peter Sharp said in a statement.
The company said the cause of the disaster remained unclear, but National Weather Service chief Sam Maiha told Papua New Guinea’s Post-Courier newspaper that shipping agencies had been warned to keep boats moored this week because of strong winds.
By nightfall yesterday, 246 survivors had been rescued by merchant ships battling bad weather at the disaster scene 50 miles east of Lae and 10 miles from the shore, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) said.
Mr Rahman said the sea temperature was above 20 degrees Celsius, warm enough for people to survive for an extended period.
He said most of those rescued had been wearing life jackets.
He said the ferry sank in water that is 3,300 feet (a kilometre) deep, making it difficult to determine whether bodies were trapped inside.
The survivors were delivered to Lae, the South Pacific country’s second-largest city, by five ships early today, said the AMSA, which is assisting with the rescue.
“None of them had sustained any real injuries. They were pretty cold and miserable,” Lae Chamber of Commerce president Alan McLay told Sky News.
The search continued at first light today, with three ships, two aircraft and two helicopters, AMSA said.
An angry crowd threw stones at the Kimbe office of Rabaul Shipping Company last night, outraged at a lack of information, police said.
“There were a lot of people crying and then they wanted to know the fate of their loved ones, the people actually who were on board,” Kimbe Police Inspector Samson Siguyaru told ABC.
“I had to send in the police to rescue (staff and), get them out of the office to a location where it is safe,” he added.
The company said the ferry’s captain had made routine radio contact with another vessel before it sank and gave no indication anything was wrong.
Papua New Guinea prime minister Peter O’Neill said the cause of the accident was unknown, but acknowledged that safety in the shipping industry was lax.
“We need to bring some safety measures back into this industry,” he said.
