180 missing after Philippine ferry fire

The number of missing in a ferry fire in the Philippines rose to 180 late today when officials realised that some people were counted twice after being rescued.

The official death toll remained at one after scuba divers found no bodies during an initial inspection of the 10,192-ton Superferry 14, which is lying on its right side in shallow waters west of Manila, a day after an explosion sparked a fire that swept through the steel-hulled vessel.

But difficult conditions prevented a thorough search.

Coast guard chief Vice Admiral Arthur Gosingan said a meeting with WG&A, the ferry’s owner, to reconcile the numbers of those rescued among the 744 passengers and 155 crew members found “double counting”.

Yesterday, 633 passengers and all of the crew were reported accounted for, but the figure dropped to 565 passengers and 153 crew members on Saturday.

That left 180 missing, plus the one known fatality.

Gosingan said “there is a probability” that some may have been trapped inside the ferry.

“We are still hoping that they (the missing) are still out there … and that they will come to us soon and tell us that ’we are here,”’ WG&A spokeswoman Gina Virtusio said.

“We cannot say they are dead unless we see the bodies, and the bodies we can only see once we check the ship.”

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo said the search for the missing “will not be called off until all of them are accounted for”.

“The authorities will get to the bottom of this incident … and take steps to ensure it does not happen again,” she said in a statement, urging stricter implementation of maritime laws.

There had been fears that the explosion may have been a terrorist attack linked to life sentences handed down in Manila to two Muslim extremists for kidnapping an American in 2000.

Gosingan said the ferry was thoroughly checked by bomb-sniffing dogs before it left Manila at 11 pm on Thursday.

“I am not saying that just because we don’t accept that (there was a bomb), it doesn’t mean we will not include it in the investigation,” he said.

“Not all explosions are caused by bombs. The probability of a terrorist act is lesser because of the security measures.”

Police and fire investigators went to Bataan province along Manila Bay, where the steel-hulled ship was towed to shallow waters, to determine the cause of the fire.

Scuba divers who inspected the ship under 16 metres (52 feet) of water saw no bodies but found evidence that supports passenger accounts of a blast.

“I would tend to think there may have been an explosion because I saw a lot of twisted metal,” said Mark Caldwell, a volunteer in the coast guard auxiliary force.

Another volunteer diver, Vanessa Garon, said she saw personal belongings of passengers and some cooking utensils littering the sea floor.

“We saw ashes, debris falling … from the boat and it hasn’t really settled yet at the sea bottom,” she said, adding that it was “greasy and oily” inside the vessel.

Virtusio said yesterday that the fire started in the tourist section on the third deck, which includes air-conditioned sleeping cabins and a dining area.

She said the crew did a fast check of the ship to ensure no passengers were left behind before the evacuation.

However, she could not rule out the possibility that some people might have stayed aboard.

Relatives of the missing, many of them sleepless from waiting for news of their loved ones, gathered at Manila’s coast guard headquarters.

“My mother was there,” said a teary-eyed Rowena Caniasa, whose 71-year-old mother was among the passengers.

“We were assured by the coast guard that nobody was left on the ship,” she said, wondering why her mother had not been found.

The fire broke out as the ferry, which was headed for the central and southern Philippines, neared Corregidor Island, about 70km (45 miles) south-west of Manila.

The ship, which could carry 1,672 passengers, was built in Japan about 15 years ago and had been operated by WG&A for the last three years.

The Philippines was the site of the world’s worst peacetime maritime disaster when a ferry sank after colliding with a fuel tanker in 1987, killing 4,340 people.