(Corfu) Greek rescuers are still looking for 12 passengers on Saturday from an Italian ferry, ravaged for 24 hours by a fire 50 km off the Greek island of Corfu.
Posted at 8:24
Aided by a helicopter, a frigate, six tugboats and a firefighting vessel, divers and firefighters crisscross the disaster area, hoping to find 12 truck drivers who are missing.
But the blaze fanned by the wind, the sporadic explosions and the infernal temperature rising to more than 500 degrees now prevent help from intervening on board the ship, according to the firefighters and the Greek coast guard.
The ferry of the Italian company Grimaldi, en route to Brindisi in Italy, caught fire at dawn on Friday, two hours after leaving the Greek port of Igoumenitsa, with 290 people, including 51 crew members, registered on board .
In addition to 278 people registered, two illegal Afghan migrants were also rescued, raising fears that other passengers not listed in the manifesto are missing, migrants often boarding illegally on ferries linking Greece to Italy.
The investigation by the Greek Maritime Accident Service has only just begun. But the fire could have started from a truck parked in the holds, according to several concordant declarations.
The captain of the ferry and two mechanics are heard on Saturday by the Public Prosecutor’s Office, according to the public television channel ERT.
“Some jumped overboard”
The port of Corfu is calm this Saturday, noted an AFP journalist. The 280 people rescued the day before spent the night at the hotel or at the hospital for a dozen of them suffering from minor injuries or breathing difficulties.
At sea, dozens of firefighters are still battling the flames and thick black smoke billowing from theEuroferry Olympianear the islet of Erikoussa, between Greece and Albania.
The boat must be towed “to a safe place” to pump fuel and water, in order to avoid any maritime pollution, Greek Merchant Marine Minister Giannis Plakiotakis said on Saturday on Skai TV.
Hosted in a hotel in Corfu, a Turkish survivor, Fahri Ozgen, is in despair: “some of our friends are still missing, we don’t know where they are”.
The day before, on the deck of the ship, some “250 people were screaming, shouting, some jumped into the sea” to escape the threatening fire that they felt “under their feet”, he told AFP.
The missing are seven Bulgarians, three Greeks, a Lithuanian and a Turk, the Greek coast guard told AFP. Their families joined Corfu on Saturday, supervised by a psychologist.
Survivors find themselves with nothing in Corfu. “We lost our money, our passports, all our administrative documents, I don’t even have shoes on my feet anymore,” laments Turkish driver Ali Duran to AFP.
Crowded and poorly ventilated cabins
Friday evening, two passengers, prisoners in the vehicle hold, were able to be evacuated after more than 10 hours in thick smoke, before being hospitalized, according to the coast guard.
One of the two, a Bulgarian, has “very low oxygen saturation and has been intubated,” said Bulgarian Deputy Foreign Minister Velislava Petrova on Saturday morning.
But the specialized team that had been able to board could not stay in the burning ship.
Several truck drivers told ERT on Saturday that some preferred to sleep in their trucks rather than in crowded ferry cabins.
According to the daily Kathimerinithe Greek truckers’ union denounced in June 2017 the malfunction of the air conditioning in the cabins of theEuroferry Olympia and of theEuroferry Egnaziaanother Grimaldi ship.
In a letter to the Greek Ministry of Merchant Marine, quoted by the newspaper, the union also criticizes the lack of cabins and the poor ventilation of the holds reserved for vehicles.
In accordance with international law, the ferry, built in 1995, had undergone a control visit which “resulted in a positive result” on February 16, said the Grimaldi group.
The previous fire on a ferry in this part of the Mediterranean took place in December 2014 on the Norman Atlantic, an Italian ship, which was en route from Patras (Greece) to Ancona (Italy). It had killed 13 people, including nine passengers.