10 :‘We saw many dead bodies inside ferry’@:2007/07/14(土) 12:41:03 ID:1iRdmEnc
‘We saw many dead bodies inside ferry’ By James Mananghaya Saturday, July 14, 2007 Divers have found corpses inside the M/V Blue Water Princess, confirming survivors’ accounts that the ship slid quickly into the rough seas even as many terrified passengers were still struggling to get out of their cabins and the cargo hold.
This developed as the death toll from the ferry disaster rose to 15 after three more bodies washed ashore.
Lt. Col. Rhoderick Parayno, the military spokesman for Southern Tagalog, said Army divers “saw many dead bodies inside” the ferry but retrieval operations could not start because of strong waves.
He said the military was sending more diving equipment to the area to help in the retrieval.
“For sure there are bodies still inside the vessel because there must have been passengers sleeping or trapped inside the trucks,” said Leo Robledo, the Philippine Coast Guard’s operations chief in Quezon.
The roll on-roll off vessel capsized in rough waters off Quezon after hitting a coral reef before dawn on Thursday. It sank about 500 meters off the coast of San Francisco town.
The sinking came as super-typhoon “Bebeng” left the country en route to southern Japan. The sea was rough but there was no rain at the time of the disaster.
Skipper Virgilio Retardo earlier told investigators that he steered the ship from its normal course to protect it from big waves when it suddenly hit a reef. He also said that the vessel was carrying 256 passengers. But Parayno said that Retardo “is now saying different things.”
Henry Buzar, a disaster relief coordinator in Quezon province, told dzBB radio that the manifest did not include an undetermined number of passengers who were in trucks, buses and other vehicles. A Coast Guard report said the 14 cargo trucks on the ship had 40 undocumented passengers.
San Francisco Mayor Ernani Tan quoted survivors and crew as saying that big waves caused the 14 trucks to tilt to one side of the vessel, which became unstable. “The vehicles caused imbalance in the ship,” he said.
Parayno said rescuers counted more than 130 survivors in San Francisco town.
The military’s tally of the dead and of the survivors differed from that of the Coast Guard, which recorded – as of press time – 126 survivors and eight dead.
Coast guard spokesman Lt. Armand Balilo said they were “still trying to counter check the figures” to determine how many were actually on board and how many are still missing.
After hearing screams in the darkness, San Francisco resident Ronaldo Cabague went out to check and found three bedraggled and shivering individuals who told him of the disaster.
Cabague immediately alerted his neighbors and prepared his small motorized outrigger for a rescue operation.
Cabague and his fellow fishermen, all members of Bantay Dagat, were able to initially rescue 50 passengers and recover four bodies. Hours later, they plucked 75 more survivors out of the raging waters.
San Francisco Mayor Tan said the death toll from the maritime disaster could have been higher had Cabague and his team not acted quickly.
“They were prepared. They knew what to do,” Tan said of the fishermen, adding that volunteers from Barangay Nasalaan also rushed to help the passengers.
Yesterday, villagers recovered two more bodies including that of a 13-month-old baby identified as Christina Labong. The dead child’s mother Monalyn survived the accident.
School children also joined their parents in helping the victims. They pitched in a few centavos from their daily allowance and were able to raise P20.
Villagers of Pagsangahan also donated clothes for the victims.
Tan echoed the Coast Guard’s initial findings that improper stowage of cargo made the ship unstable.
“When a huge wave hit the ship, the restraints on the vehicles that were loaded into it snapped, causing these to shift to the left side of the ferry,” Tan said. “It was good that when the captain realized he could not put the ship back into a stable condition, he did his best to make it reach close to the shore. Otherwise, the casualties could have been higher.” With AFP, AP