At least twelve people were missing on Friday, February 18, in the evening following the fire of an Italian ferry in the Ionian Sea, where a race once morest time is engaged to overcome the disaster and rescue the missing passengers before nightfall, according to the Greek authorities.
Divers have widened their search area at sea around the burning building, to find any missing off the Greek island of Corfu, said the Greek coast guard.
The fire broke out shortly following 4 a.m. local time on Friday morning (3 a.m. French time) when theEuroferry Olympia of the Italian company Grimaldi was off the islet of Erikoussa, between Greece and Albania.
Of a total of 290 people registered on board, including 51 Italian and Greek crew members, 278 were rescued and transported to the port of Corfu, according to the report of the Greek coast guard intervened alongside an Italian patrol boat. Ten of them were hospitalized with breathing problems and minor injuries, according to Greek public television ERT. But several are still missing.
“The operation continues to locate twelve missing passengers”, specifies Friday evening a press release from the coast guard. Nine are Bulgarian nationals, the Bulgarian Foreign Ministry confirmed. A team of specialized Greek rescuers was able to board the burning ship where, according to the Grimaldi company, five missing were “been located”.
Two truck drivers – a Turkish and a Bulgarian – were able to be evacuated by helicopter from the vehicle hold where they had been trapped and taken to hospital, ERT reported.
Fears of stowaways
Among the survivors is a clandestine migrant, whose presence raises fears that of possible other passengers not counted on the burning ship. Migrants often smuggle aboard ferries linking Greece to Italy. The ship made a regular night connection between the Greek port of Igoumenitsa and the Italian port of Brindisi.
On the list of people on board, there are in particular 127 Bulgarians, 64 Italians, 24 Turks and 21 Greeks, according to authorities and media of the countries concerned.
The survivors were transported to hotels in Corfu while the Grimaldi company should send a ferry to allow those who wish to reach Italy, according to ERT. “The ship is burning from end to end”said a Greek rescuer, Yiorgos Glikofridis. “There is a lot of smoke and the visibility is poor”, he said on ERT. The Greek emergency services estimate that it will take several hours to bring the disaster under control.
The fire might have started from a truck parked in the holds reserved for vehicles, the captain of the ferry informed the crew of Italian rescuers, according to the Ansa press agency. 153 commercial vehicles and 32 cars boarded the ferry, according to the company. “There has been no fuel spillage at sea and the stability of the ship does not appear to be compromised”Grimaldi added, in a press release.
“Panic” on board
“The flames were gigantic, there was panic on board”passengers testified to Italian rescuers.“The captain of the ship, when he discovered the fire, went around the cabins and assembled the passengers on one deck, then he ordered the abandonment of the ship. The evacuation was not a walk in the park”Italian rescue patrol commander Felice Lodovico Simone Cicchetti told Ansa.
The fire broke out two hours following the departure of the ferry, built in 1995, which had sailed around 2 a.m. (midnight, French time).
“We were sleeping when we were alerted that there was fire”said a passenger. “We got dressed in a second and went up to the deck where we were given life jackets”continued this truck driver joined by ERT. “In just fifteen minutes, the fire reached the bridge”, said another passenger on the Greek channel Skai. Corn “the crew saved us”he said once more, welcoming a reaction on board “simply perfect”.
Maritime ferry connections between the Greek ports of Igoumenitsa (north-west) and Patras (south-west) are frequent with the Italian ports in the Adriatic Sea, Brindisi or Ancona.
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 to Ancona. It had killed 13 people, including nine passengers.
