Posted on 02/03/2006 3:48:35 PM PST by nuconvert
Most of 1,400 on Doomed Ferry Feared Lost
By MARIAM FAM, Associated Press Writer
An aging ferry sank in the choppy waters of the Red Sea on Friday with more than 1,400 people on board, mainly Egyptian workers returning from Saudi Arabia. Most were feared lost but officials said at least 314 made it to safety.
A spokesman for President Hosni Mubarak said the ferry did not have enough lifeboats, and questions were raised about the safety of the 35-year-old, refitted ship that was weighed down with 220 cars as well as the passengers.
"It's a roll-on, roll-off ferry, and there is big question mark over the stability of this kind of ship," said David Osler of the London shipping paper Lloyds List. "It would only take a bit of water to get on board this ship and it would be all over. ... The percentage of this type of ferry involved in this type of disaster is huge."
Weather may also have been a factor. There were high winds and a sandstorm overnight on Saudi Arabia's west coast.
Officials said more than 185 bodies were recovered while hundreds remained missing in the dark, chilly sea nearly 24 hours after the ship went down. One lifeboat was spotted from a helicopter during the day bobbing in the waves with what appeared to be about a dozen or more passengers.
Hundreds of angry relatives of the passengers crowded for hours outside Egypt's port of Safaga, where the ferry had been heading. They shouted at police barring the iron gates and complained they had no information on their loved ones.
"This is a dirty government, may God burn their hearts as they burned mine," one woman wailed, slapping her face in grief. "I want my brother. I have no one else in this life."
A Transport Ministry spokesman said 314 people, including a 3-year-old child, were rescued.
Some of the survivors were taken from the ferry's lifeboats, others from inflatable rescue craft dropped into the sea by helicopters, and others were pulled from the water wearing life jackets, the governor of Red Sea province, Bakr al-Rashidi, told The Associated Press.
A police official at the operations control room in Safaga said 185 bodies were pulled from the sea. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press.
Well after nightfall, there were contradictory reports whether any survivors had been brought to shore. A security official said 20 had been sent to a Safaga hospital, but police at the port's entrance told families none was back. Police ringed the hospital.
Rescue efforts also appeared confused. Egyptian officials initially turned down a British offer to divert a warship to the scene and a U.S. offer to send a P3-Orion maritime naval patrol aircraft to the area. The British craft, HMS Bulwark, headed from the southern Red Sea where it was operating, then turned around when the offer was rejected.
But then Egypt reversed itself and asked for both the Orion and the Bulwark to be sent — then finally decided to call off the Bulwark, deciding it was too far away to help, said Lt. Cdr. Charlie Brown of the U.S. 5th Fleet, based in Bahrain. In the end, the Orion — which has the capability to search underwater from the air — was sent, but the Bulwark was not, he said.
Four Egyptian rescue ships reached the scene Friday afternoon, about 10 hours after the 35-year-old ferry likely went down some 57 miles off the Egyptian port of Hurghada.
Saudi ships were patrolling waters off their shore to hunt for survivors, but found none, a senior Saudi security official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press.
Any survivors still in the Red Sea could go into shock as temperatures fell in the already cold waters, which average in the upper 60s in February. The waters in the area are up to 3,000 feet deep.
Mubarak's spokesman said an investigation was under way.
"The swift sinking of the ferry and the lack of sufficient lifeboats suggests there was some violation, but we cannot say until the investigation is complete," said presidential spokesman Suleiman Awad, quoted by the semiofficial news agency MENA.
Egyptian regulations require life jackets on the boat, but implementation of safety procedures is often lax. It was not known if the ship had enough life jackets and whether the passengers put them on when the ship sank.
The ship, "Al-Salaam Boccaccio 98," left Thursday at 7:30 p.m. from the Saudi port of Dubah on a 120-mile trip to Safaga, south of Hurghada. It had been scheduled to arrive at 3 a.m.
The vessel went down between midnight and 2 a.m., when authorities lost contact with it. No distress signal was received.
The ferry was carrying 1,200 Egyptian and 112 other passengers as well as 96 crew members, the head of Al-Salaam Maritime Transport Company Mamdouh Ismail told the AP. The passengers included 99 Saudis, three Syrians, two Sudanese, and a Canadian, officials said. It was not clear where the other passengers were from.
Tens of thousands of Egyptians work in Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf countries — many of them from impoverished families in southern Egypt who spend years abroad to earn money. They often travel by ship to and from Saudi Arabia across the Red Sea, a cheaper option than flying. The Saudi port of Dubah is a major transit point for them.
But some on board the ferry were believed to be Muslim pilgrims who had overstayed their visas after last month's hajj pilgrimage to work in the kingdom.
President Bush offered his condolences.
"Our thoughts and prayers are with all Egyptians and citizens of other nations who suffered losses in this terrible accident," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said in Texas.
The agent for the ship in Saudi Arabia, Farid al-Douadi, said the vessel had the capacity for 2,500 passengers. But the owner's Web site said 387-foot-long boat had a capacity for 1,487 passengers and crew.
The Genoa-based Italian Naval Registry, which has certified the ferry for safety since its construction in 1970, said the vessel never had any problems and passed its last structural inspection in June 2005.
In 1991, the registry oversaw the construction of two additional decks on the ferry to add passenger space for its then-owner, the Italian ferry company Tirrenia di Navigazione SpA. In doing so, the boat grew in height, and to compensate engineers also enlarged the base, said the registry's spokesman, Mario Dogliana.
First confirmation of the sinking came when another ship owned by the same company, the Saint Catherine, received a distress call from one of the lifeboats just as it arrived in Dubah from Safaga, Ismail said. The Saint Catherine notified the company headquarters, which told the Egyptian authorities.
A ship owned by the same company, also carrying pilgrims, collided with a cargo ship at the southern entrance to the Suez Canal in October, causing a stampede among passengers trying to escape the sinking ship. Two people were killed and 40 injured.
Egyptian officials initially turned down a British offer to divert a warship to the scene and a U.S. offer to send a P3-Orion maritime naval patrol aircraft to the area. The British craft, HMS Bulwark, headed from the southern Red Sea where it was operating, then turned around when the offer was rejected. But then Egypt reversed itself and asked for both the Orion and the Bulwark to be sent — then finally decided to call off the Bulwark, deciding it was too far away to help...]
....Was Nagin In charge here?
...Yeah, that's it!
I'll bet dollars to donuts that the scene last night was straight out of hell. With Islamic valor, I'd seriously doubt the scene was 'women and children first.' People pushing each other into the abyss would be my guess.
Whoa. Lighten up with the cattle prod, man.
Note to self: The core of your salvation is your belief in the free gift of grace from Jesus Christ. Praise God you don't have to follow a migration ritual that regularly kills thousands, allows corrupt and self-important royal rulers to arbitrarily punish their followers, and keeps "the faithful" in abject poverty and in a techonological getto based upon a thousand years of poverty and ignorance.
trying to care....still trying....
Amazing how many people went to work today like normal and never knew a thing about this tragedy.
If you want to read about a horrific maritime disaster, check out The General Slocum Disaster page.
Up until the attacks on September 11th, it was a the largest single loss of life in New York history. It has it all, greed, scandal, cover ups. Over a thousand killed, women and children making up the bulk of the casualties.
I saw the author on C-Span's Book TV program. I'd never heard of the General Slocum prior to seeing the program. The book title is Ship Ablaze : The Tragedy of the Steamboat General Slocum
I've read of this disaster and I agree that not all is roses in the West - nor has it been. My point can be most easily understood by standing on any street in many third world nations when a que develops or scarce commodities are at stake. The behavior of the mob almost universally rules. Public behavior in many developing nations would be considered riot in the West.
thanx for the link
I beg to differ, but according to my sources, it was none other than,
THE JOOOOOOOOOOOOSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!
A few years ago, either TLC, Discovery or A&E, was showing a program about a ferry that sank. I believe it was in Indonesia. It wasn't on the scale of this disaster, but a large loss of life all he same. The story focused primarily on a British couple. The handful of survivors were mainly Westerners. It seems as though most of the locals couldn't swim.
The gal is credited with keeping one guy alive, she kept talking to him , convincing him he could stay afloat.
They were afloat for several days. She described how she had to swin away from people, they wanted to cling to her. She knew that they would drag her down, as she'd seen it happen to others.
oh, ok. sorry.
sarc/ Be careful you may cause an international incident. /sarc
"We will proudly trust in Allah and thumb our noses at any assistance from infidels!
...er, except when we get really desperate because we're so backward due to our lives being ruled by ridiculous lies and hatred."
We laugh, but in reality if the whackos aren't stood up to it's only a matter of time before they get around to us.
We're just a little further down on the list of priorities than large newspapers for the moment, but we're on that list, I'm sure.
I'm waiting for the Israeli torpedo theory.
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