Egypt ferry survivors tell of fire
Sunday, February 5, 2006
Close to 1,000 people are feared dead as chances dwindle
of finding many more survivors from an aging Egyptian ferry
that caught fire and then sank in the middle of the Red
Sea.
Controversy mounted over the safety of the 36-year-old
ship, and survivors blamed the captain for refusing to turn
around when a fire broke out shortly after the vessel left
Saudi Arabia with 1,300 passengers on Thursday night.
Hundreds of relatives gathered in Safaga on hearing news
of the ship's sinking, potentially one of the deadliest
maritime disasters of recent years. Anger mounted as little
information on the fate of loved ones filtered through.
Maritime sources said 378 people from the Al-Salam Boccaccio
98 had been pulled out of the sea alive.
Among them were 29 passengers who were saved by Saudi coast
guards and taken back to safety in Duba, the ship's port
of departure.
A police official said late on Friday that 185 bodies had
been recovered and that the death toll was expected to soar.
Strong winds and currents hampered the initial phase of
the search and rescue operation and chances of spotting
more survivors in the cold and shark-infested sea were receding
by the minute.
"Two hours after our departure from (the Saudi port
of) Duba thick smoke started to come out of the engines,"
34-year-old Egyptian Raafat al-Sayyed told AFP.
He said passengers were told to gather on the decks so
that crew members could extinguish the blaze as the ship
started to list dangerously.
"But the fire continued for a long time, and they
(the crew) kept on saying that they were getting it under
control," said Kamel Mohammad Abdel Askari, 48, another
Egyptian.
The survivors, being treated in the hospital at Hurghada
on the Red Sea, said the Panamanian-flagged ferry continued
on its voyage, listing to the port side, before going down
in less than 10 minutes.
The transport ministry's head of maritime affairs, Shereen
Hassan, explained that fire broke out twice on the ship.
There were conflicting reports about where the blaze started,
with different witnesses saying it broke out in one of the
engines or in the exhaust system and officials talking of
a truck catching fire in the car deck.
In a briefing to President Hosni Mubarak, who was in Hurghada
to visit survivors, Mr Hassan gave the chronology of events,
which revealed that search and rescue operations were only
launched seven hours after the ship sank.
The owners of the ship, the Al-Salam Maritime Transport
Company, defended the record of the ship and its crew, saying
they met all international standards.
It added in a statement that it was insured by a leading
company in the United Kingdom.
Around 1,200 of the passengers were Egyptians from poor
rural areas who had sought better paid jobs in Gulf countries
or performed the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia.
The Italian classification society that inspected the ship,
Registro Italiano Navale (RINA), said its seaworthiness
had been checked twice last year.
RINA is facing prosecution in France for allegedly failing
to carry out proper checks on the Maltese-flagged tanker
Erika which broke up off the coast of France six years ago.
The head of Duba port said the ship had passed all tests
successfully a day earlier, despite survivor claims of a
shortage of life-saving equipment.
But pressure continued to mount on the authorities to provide
more information on the missing
Egypt
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