Ten sailors died and 11 are still missing after the sinking of a Spanish trawler off Canada, in the Atlantic, and the hope of finding survivors was dwindling Tuesday evening with nightfall.
“Unfortunately, three other deceased people have been recovered from the fishing boat” which sank, tweeted the Canadian rescue team at the start of the evening.
Shortly after the sinking, three sailors who had managed to board a lifeboat were able to be saved.
The weather conditions, with waves of more than 4 meters and wind, made the search very complicated all day for the Canadian rescuers. And the arrival of night and even lower temperatures reduced the hope of finding survivors.
When the Pitanxo Villa was wrecked on Tuesday around 4:30 a.m. GMT (00:30 a.m. locally) 450 kilometers southeast of Newfoundland, 24 crew members were on board.
Debris from a 50-meter-long trawler anchored in the small port of Marín in Galicia (north-west Spain) was found, Brian Owens, Canadian spokesperson for the coordination center told AFP. of rescue, which manages the searches.
” Accident “
According to Spanish sea rescue, the crew consisted of 16 Spaniards, five Peruvians and three Ghanaians. Among the Spanish sailors, many came from Galicia.
The boat had an “accident” and “sent a distress signal”, and two ships came to its rescue, Rosa Quintana, the Galician regional government’s head of maritime affairs, told reporters.
It was another Spanish boat, the “Playa Menduina Dos”, which finally found around 9:30 GMT (05:30 local time) the bodies of four of the victims, as well as three survivors in a lifeboat, said the ministry.
These three sailors, whose nationality has not been specified, were evacuated in a state of hypothermia by a Canadian sea rescue helicopter, said Ms. Quintana.
According to the sub-prefect of Pontevedra, Maica Larriba, a total of four lifeboats were spotted by the rescuers, who found several life jackets and numerous objects at the scene of the sinking.
Help was able to approach “three of them: two were empty, completely empty”, she explained, adding that the three survivors were found in the third boat.
” A tragedy “
According to the Spanish Ministry of Transport, the causes of the accident are currently “not known”. The weather conditions were nevertheless bad, with “wind” and “reduced visibility”, he said.
“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,” Brian Owens confirmed, adding that the search would continue “whatever the weather”.
Canadian rescue deployed a helicopter, a military plane, a coast guard vessel and several boats to conduct the search off Saint John of Newfoundland, the easternmost Canadian province of the country.
“We are following with concern the search and rescue missions of the crew of the Galician ship,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez reacted on Twitter.
“It’s a tragedy”, confided, in tears, the aunt of one of the sailors of the Pitanxo Villa, Jonathan Calderón, to the Galician daily La Voz de Galicia. The 39-year-old is the father of two children, she said.
the Pitanxo Villa belongs to the fishing group Nores, which has eight refrigerated trawlers and 300 employees, according to its website.
with Valentin Bontemps in Madrid