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| Situation Update No. 1 Ref.no.: VI-20091226-24323-PHL
Situation Update No. 1
On 2009-12-27 at 05:21:27 [UTC]
Event: Vehicle Accident
Location: Philippines Province of Batangas Verde Island
Number of Deads: 10 person(s)
Number of Missing: 25 person(s)
Number of Evacuated: 63 person(s)
Situation: A steal-hull ferry carrying 88 passengers and crew on board sank at Batangas passage, south of Luzon island, around mid-night Saturday. Sixty-three people have been rescued while 25 others remain missing, a coast guard spokesman said. Lieutenant Commander Armand Balilo, the country's coast guard authority spokesman, told Xinhua over phone that ten more survivors were found early Sunday after an initial group of 53 people were rescued by passing ferries shortly after M/V Baleno-9 sank. The roll-on-and-roll-off ferry, carrying 70 passengers and nine vehicles from Calapan city to Batangas port, was reported listed before sinking at around 10:07 p.m. Saturday local time (1407 GMT) when it was passing the narrow Batangas channel separating Mindoro island with the Luzon island, the coast guard said in a report. Balilo said that the ferry was not overloaded and the cause of the accident has not to be determined yet. Coast guard initial inquiry quoted survivors as saying that the vessel took in water coming from the bow ramp and was severely tilted and eventually sank. One survivor said that the sea was rough when the accident happened. Balilo said four coast guard vessels, two helicopters are conducting the search at the scene while the Navy also dispatched a vessel to provide assistance. It was the second sea accident in the Philippines during the Christmas holiday. A wooden-hull motor ferry sank after ramming into a fishing ship at the mouth of Manila bay on Thursday, leaving 3 dead and 24 others missing. Sea accident is common in the Philippine archipelago where low- income families largely rely on boats to transport from one island to another. But bad weather, poor maintenance, lax enforcement of safety measures resulted in a series of deadly accidents. In 2008, a giant passenger ship capsized at the height of a typhoon in central Philippines, killing nearly 800 people. |  | | | |
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