DPA
At least 63 people were rescued after a passenger ferry sank off the eastern Philippines yesterday, the authorities said.
An estimated 84 people — 58 passengers and 26 crew members — were on board the Maharlika II when it sank off the coastal province of Southern Leyte, Coast Guard spokesman Lieutenant Armand Balilo said.
“Rescuers are having difficulty in the area because of huge waves and strong winds,” the provincial governor, Roger Mercado, told a Manila radio station.
Mercado said 13 passengers were rescued by a sister ferry of the Maharlika and another 50 by a foreign vessel. Balilo said the Coast Guard has dispatched additional rescue teams to the area. The ferry was on its way to Surigao City from Liloan town in Southern Leyte, a trip of about three hours.
Mercado said the ferry sent a distress signal after its rudder broke, stalling the vessel while it was being battered by the waves and winds.
The accident took place as typhoon Kalmaegi, packing maximum winds of 120 kilometres per hour and gusts of up to 150 kph, barrelled towards the northern Philippines from the country’s east coast. Balilo said there was no storm signal warning over Southern Leyte or Surigao when the accident happened.
Nonoy Caseres, a brother of a passenger, said he last spoke with his sibling at 6 pm (1000 GMT).
“He was crying,” Caseres told DZMM radio station.
He added that his brother told him: “We’ve been ordered to abandon ship. There is no rescue coming.”
Before the phone call, Caseres said his brother, who was travelling with his wife, sent him an SMS saying, “God be with us.”
Sea travel is a key mode of transportation in the Philippines, an archipelago of more than 7,000 islands. But accidents are common because of poor safety standards and overloading. The country was the site of the world’s worst peacetime maritime disaster when a ferry collided with an oil tanker days before Christmas in 1987, killing more than 4,300 people. .
