Death toll climbs to 10 in fire on ferry

Associated Press

BARI, Italy

There were no fire alarms at first, no knocks on the door from the crew, just thick, acrid smoke filling cabins and waking passengers on the overnight ferry from Greece to Italy.

In the chaos that followed, passengers said, they received virtually no instructions from the crew. The principle of women and children first went out the window, and passengers started pushing and shoving and came to blows over seats in the lifeboats and helicopter baskets.

“Everyone there was trampling on each other to get onto the helicopter,” Greek truck driver Christos Perlis told The Associated Press by telephone from one of the rescue vessels summoned after the Italian-flagged ferry caught fire in the Adriatic Sea off Albania early Sunday.

Italian and Greek helicopter rescue crews Monday evacuated the last of the known survivors, bringing the number rescued to 427.

But the death toll climbed to at least 10, and rescuers searched below deck and scoured the surrounding waters for more possible victims amid serious discrepancies in the ship’s manifest and confusion over how many people were aboard.

The vessel’s operator, Anek Lines, said 475 were on the ferry. But Italian officials said the names on the manifest may have represented just reservations, not actual passengers who boarded.