U.S. divers to join search on Philippine ferry
By Romeo Ranoco
SIBUYAN ISLAND, Philippines, June 25 (Reuters) - U.S. navy divers will join the grim search for bodies in a sunken ferry in the Philippines on Wednesday with over 700 people still missing.
Hundreds of passengers were feared trapped inside the Princess of the Stars when it ran aground and capsized in waves as big as houses off the central island of Sibuyan during a typhoon on Saturday.
Philippine divers saw upto 15 bodies in lifevests bobbing in airpockets when they searched part of the ship on Tuesday. They retrieved three, including one believed to be a crew member still clutching his radio.
"They are optimistic they will be able to penetrate the others spaces today," Lieutenant Commander Armand Balilo, coast guard spokesman, said.
Officials do not expect to find any survivors.
Around 10 divers from U.S. military ship, the USNS Stockham, will join the operation after receiving orientation.
Plans to bore a hole into the side of the seven-storey vessel have been abandoned for fear of disturbing around 100,000 litres of bunker fuel still on board.
Princess of the Stars was resting upside down with the tip of its bow above the water and its stern resting on the bottom of the sea, easily visible from shore.
So far, 48 people have been found alive out of 865 passengers and crew on board and 70 bodies have been counted, the coast guard said.
Decomposing corpses keep washing up on surrounding islands, including 22 on one island, forcing ill-equipped communities to quickly bury them.
The sinking of Princess of the Stars may be the Philippines' worst maritime disaster since 1987 when the Dona Paz ferry collided with an oil tanker killing more than 4,000 people.
Sulpicio Lines, which owns Princess of the Stars, also owned the Dona Paz.
DANGEROUS WATERS
Sulpicio Lines has agreed to bring recovered bodies to the central city of Cebu, where the ship was meant to dock and distraught relatives were waiting.
Late on Tuesday, nine survivors, who drifted on a rubber boat for nearly 24 hours, had a tearful reunion with relatives at the airport in Cebu.
"It's a miracle," said Besminda Blanco, tightly embracing her son Wresley. "We'll be offering thanksgiving masses for my son's new life.
Shipping tragedies are common in the Philippines, an archipelago of over 7,000 islands where safety rules are poorly implemented and substandard vessels ply dangerous waters.
Families are irate at Sulpicio for proceeding with a sailing when Typhoon Fengsen, with gusts of up to 195 kph (120 mph), had already hit the archipelago on Friday.
The government has ordered a review of maritime regulations and suspended Sulpicio's passenger ferry operations.
Aside from the ferry disaster, at least 213 people were killed, largely by drowning, in a torrent of floods in the western Visayas region in the centre of the country, the office of civil defense said.
The sixth typhoon to hit the archipelago caused nearly 1 billion pesos ($22.4 million) in damage to infrastructure, and washed away thousands of homes.
The Department of Agriculture said around 3.3 billion pesos worth of crops had been damaged but the destruction would not impact 2008 rice production.
Fengshen, which has weakened to a tropical storm, was expected to dump rain on Hong Kong and Macau on Wednesday before weakening to a tropical depression over southern China, according to the tropical storm monitoring website Tropical Storm Risk (tsr.mssl.ucl.ac.uk).
(Writing by Carmel Crimmins; Additional reporting by Manny Mogato in Cebu and Rosemarie Francisco and Karen Lema in Manila)
