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HONG KONG (Reuters)
- At least 36 people died and dozens were injured when a ferry carrying
more than 120 revelers on a company outing collided with another ferry
and sank near an island south of Hong Kong on Monday night, in one of the city's worst maritime accidents.
The ferry belonging to the Hongkong Electric Company,
controlled by billionaire Li Ka-shing, was taking staff and family
members to watch fireworks in the city's Victoria Harbour to celebrate
China's National Day and mid-autumn festival when it hit the other ship
and began sinking near Lamma island.
Survivors said they had little time to put on life jackets before the ferry flooded, trapping passengers.
"Within 10 minutes,
the ship had sunk. We had to wait at least 20 minutes before we were
rescued," said one male survivor, wrapped in a blanket on the shore.
Some survivors said
people had to break windows to swim to the surface. "We thought we were
going to die. Everyone was trapped inside," said a middle-aged woman.
HongKong Electric, a
unit of Power Assets Holdings which is controlled by Asia's richest man
Li, said the boat had capacity to hold up to 200 people.
The tragedy was the
worst to hit Hong Kong since 1996 when more than 40 people died in a
fire in a commercial building.
The other ship,
owned by Hong Kong and Kowloon Ferry Holdings, suffered a badly damaged
bow in the collision but made it safely to the pier on Lamma, an island
popular with tourists and expatriates about a half-hour boat ride from
Hong Kong.
Several of its roughly 100 passengers and crew were taken to hospital with injuries.
"After the
accident, it was all chaos and people were crying. Then water began
seeping in and the vessel began to tilt to one side and people were all
told to stand on the other side and everyone started putting on life
jackets," a male passenger who was on the Lamma ferry told reporters.
Hong Kong is one of the world's busiest shipping channels, although serious marine accidents are rare.
The waters around
Hong Kong were busy on Monday with numerous passenger ferries, private
leisure boats and fishing vessels out to watch the city's fireworks, but
it is unclear why the two ferries collided.
"Our ferry left
Lamma island at 8.15 pm to watch the fireworks display out at sea, but
within a few minutes, a tugboat (ferry) smashed into our vessel," Yuen
Sui-see, a director for Hongkong Electric, one of the city's two main
electricity generators, told reporters.
A spokeswoman for Hong Kong and Kowloon Ferry said they were assessing what had happened.
"Our captain is not well and we have not been able to talk to him so far," the spokeswoman told local television.
A maritime
department spokesman told reporters: "Normally vessels ought to stay and
help other vessels in distress. But what we heard was that the other
ship had passengers who were injured and needed help."
The nighttime
collision sparked a major rescue operation involving dive teams,
helicopters and boats that saw scores of people plucked from the sea.
Television pictures
showed the red and blue bow of the Hong Kong Electric Company ferry
pointing skywards, surrounded by rescue vessels. By Tuesday a large
crane on a barge had been connected to the stricken ferry.
"We will continue
our search. We also don't rule out that some may have swam to shore
themselves and haven't contacted their families and so may not be
accounted for," Ng Kuen-chi, acting deputy director of fire services
told local television.
The search was
hampered by the vessel being partly sunken, poor visibility and too much
clutter inside the vessel, Ng said.
Teams of men in
white coats, green rubber gloves and yellow helmets carried corpses off a
police launch in body bags on Tuesday. Local media reported that
children were among the dead.
At one of the
city's public mortuaries around 50 grieving relatives gathered, some
crying, while others were called into identify the dead.
More than 100
people were sent to five hospitals and nine people suffered serious
injuries or remain in critical condition, the government said in a
statement.
Hong Kong leader
Leung Chun-ying visited survivors of the collision and pledged a
thorough investigation into the crash. Read more
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