Monday, December 29, 2014
Associated Press
ATHENS, GREECE
Hundreds of passengers and crew braved smoky fire, low temperatures and gale-force winds Sunday as they waited for nearly a day to be evacuated from a burning ferry adrift in rough seas between Italy and Albania. At least one person died and two were injured in the risky rescue operation.
The Italian Navy said 190 of the 478 people on the ferry, sailing from the Greek port of Patras to Ancona in Italy, had been evacuated by late Sunday. Most were airlifted by helicopter to other merchant vessels sailing nearby, though a few were flown to hospitals in southern Italy to be treated for hypothermia.
“It will be a very difficult night. A night in which we hope we will be able to rescue all on board,” Greek Merchant Marine Minister Miltiadis Varvitsiotis said in Athens.
He said 10 merchant ships were in the area assisting rescue efforts, and that those who already had taken on dozens of passengers from the stricken ferry would remain in the area until the operation was over. Only then would it be determined where they would go, Varvitsiotis said.
Nevertheless, officials in the Adriatic port of Brindisi were preparing for the first large group to arrive — some 49 people, expected sometime after midnight, the coast guard said.
The fire broke out before dawn Sunday on a car deck of the Italian-flagged Norman Atlantic, carrying 422 passengers and 56 crew members. Passengers huddled on the vessel’s upper decks, pelted by rain and hail and struggling to breathe through the thick smoke, passengers told Greek media by phone.
The ferry was last inspected by the Patras Port Authority on Dec. 19 and six “deficiencies” were found, but none were so grave as to keep it in port, according to the report on the European Maritime Safety Agency’s website.