(Madrid) Canadian rescue hoped Tuesday to find survivors of the sinking of a Spanish trawler in the waters of Newfoundland, despite very unfavorable weather conditions.
Posted at 8:00 a.m.
Updated at 10:21 a.m.
“The fact that we have already found three survivors in a life raft gives us hope that others were able to put on their survival suits, get into a raft and leave the boat,” who was not found, said Brian Owens, a Canadian relief spokesman. At least four crew members are dead, fifteen others are missing and three have been rescued, according to the Spanish government.
Operations continued Tuesday morning (local time) off the Big Island of Newfoundland, in an attempt to find other survivors of the Pitanxo Villa, a fishing boat based in the small port of Marín, in the province of Pontevedra, in Galicia (northwestern Spain), which had 22 crew members on board, according to the ministry.
Several ships and aircraft dispatched
Canadian rescue workers deployed a helicopter, a military plane, a Canadian Coast Guard ship and several boats to conduct the search, some 250 nautical miles (about 450 km) east of Saint-Jean de Terre-Neuve. , the easternmost province of the country.
“The weather at the moment complicates our research. The waves are about four meters high and the visibility is reduced to about a quarter of a nautical mile” (less than 500 meters), spokesman Brian Owens said, adding that the search “will continue regardless of the weather. what he does”.
The alert was given shortly after midnight local time.
Several hundred miles from Newfoundland are several offshore oil rigs, including Hibernia, which according to relief, “is being used as a refueling station for our planes.”
This is another Spanish boat, the Playa Menduina Doswho rescued the three survivors, the Ministry of Transport of Spain said, explaining that “for the moment, the causes of the accident are not known”.
The ministry said that of the 22 crew members of the Pitanxo Villa, 12 were of Spanish nationality. According to local Spanish media, the other ten sailors were Ghanaian and Peruvian.
the Pitanxo Villa had an “accident” and “sent a distress signal”, and two ships came to its rescue, Rosa Quintana, the head of maritime affairs for the Galician regional government (a coastal province in the northwest from Spain).
The three rescued crew members were “evacuated by helicopter by Canadian sea rescue,” she continued.
A few hours earlier, the sub-prefect of Pontevedra, Maica Larriba, had announced that “bodies” had been found after the sinking.
“Four lifeboats” were seen by rescuers on Tuesday “around noon” Spanish time (6 a.m. EST), or 6:30 a.m. in Newfoundland, she said.
frigid waters of the North Atlantic
Rescuers were able to approach “three of them: two were empty, completely empty, and there were only three survivors in hypothermic shock in the other”, she explained, adding that the water temperature was “terrible, very low”.
The Spanish government “is following with concern and concern (the operations) of search and rescue of the crew members”, commented the spokeswoman for the Spanish government, Isabel Rodríguez, in a press conference at the end of the council of ministers, assuring that the Spanish authorities were in contact with their Canadian counterparts.
Reacting to the news, Labor Minister Yolanda Díaz, herself from Galicia, said on Twitter that she was “appalled” by the tragedy.
“Bad news is reaching us from the other side of the Atlantic. We are aware of dead and missing crew members. All my support to the families in these moments of pain and doubt, ”she wrote again.
The mayor of Pontevedra, Miguel Anxo Lores, expressed on the same social network his “concern” while waiting to receive “more news”.
According to the first information available, sailors from the neighboring municipalities of Pontevedra are among the crew, he added.
the Pitanxo Villaa fifty-meter trawler flying the Spanish flag, belonged to the fishing group Nores.
Founded in 1950, this company has eight refrigerated trawlers, 300 employees and is present in 60 countries around the world, according to its website.
Contacted by AFP, the group could not be reached early Tuesday afternoon.