http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060203/ap_on_re_mi_ea/egypt_ship_sinks

This is quite a tragedy.

yea, i read that this morning. very unforunate. question. what kind of fucking ferry holds 1300 people? ambitious designs on transportation always bother me. just make a point A to point B machine that doesnt crash, sink, or explode in rain sleet snow or hurricane.

Ferries are pretty damn huge in other countries. I know when I was in one last summer in Greece, that thing must have had 1000 people and plenty of cars.

Holy shit! That's a lot of people. My heart goes out to all the folk who lost someone.

I'm sure a bunch of charities are going to form because of this incident.

Ferries are pretty damn huge in other countries. I know when I was in one last summer in Greece, that thing must have had 1000 people and plenty of cars.
yikes. see thats crazy to me. just like jumbo jets weighing something ridiculous being used to fly.

Serves these ferries right. God has punished these homosexsters for their sodomy.

ROFLMFAO

damn.

when i think of "ferry" i always thought of these:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/82/Ferry.bristol.arp.jpg/250px-Ferry.bristol.arp.jpg

but, this was the boat in question:

http://us.news3.yimg.com/us.i2.yimg.com/p/ap/20060203/capt.par10402031543.egypt_sea_disaster_par104.jpg

damn.

when i think of "ferry" i always thought of these:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/82/Ferry.bristol.arp.jpg/250px-Ferry.bristol.arp.jpg

but, this was the boat in question:

http://us.news3.yimg.com/us.i2.yimg.com/p/ap/20060203/capt.par10402031543.egypt_sea_disaster_par104.jpg

I always think of Kathie Lee Gifford.

(thoughts and prayers)

This is not uncommon in that part of the world.... ferry accidents, that is.

There are very little laws and/or governing bodies to dictate maintenance and safety. Ferry transport is an everyday thing over there, especially if the land is broken up by large bodies of water (i.e., New York City).

1300 people in a ferry in Egypt is about right. Probably packed like sardines. Probably already falling apart.

They said "a capacity of 2500 people". But there's no mention about the "manufacturers max. capacity" numbers.

Is Mike Brown running the disaster unit over there now?


Rescue efforts appeared confused. Egyptian officials initially turned down a British offer to divert a warship to the scene to help out and a U.S. offer to send a P3-Orion maritime naval patrol aircraft to the area. The British craft, HMS Bulwark, headed toward from the southern Red Sea where it was operating, then turned around when the offer was rejected.

But then Egypt reversed itself and asked for both the Orion and the Bulwark to be sent, said Cdr. Jeff Breslau, a spokesman for the U.S. 5th Fleet, based in Bahrain. The Bulwark is part of a Dutch-controlled multinational task force, which includes assets from the 5th Fleet and British navy.

This is not uncommon in that part of the world.... ferry accidents, that is.

There are very little laws and/or governing bodies to dictate maintenance and safety. Ferry transport is an everyday thing over there, especially if the land is broken up by large bodies of water (i.e., New York City).

1300 people in a ferry in Egypt is about right. Probably packed like sardines. Probably already falling apart.

They said "a capacity of 2500 people". But there's no mention about the "manufacturers max. capacity" numbers.

Trust me. These ferries are huge. They can hold 2000 people EASY.

Red Sea ferry survivors say captain fled

By Tom Perry 9 minutes ago

SAFAGA, Egypt (Reuters) - Survivors of the Red Sea ferry disaster said on Saturday the Egyptian captain had fled his burning ship by lifeboat and abandoned them to their fate, as hopes faded of finding some 800 missing people.
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Some passengers, plucked alive from the sea or from boats after the ferry caught fire and sank early on Friday, said crew members had told them not to worry about the blaze below deck and even ordered them to take off lifejackets.

An official at el-Salam Maritime Transport Company, which owned the Al Salam 98, said the captain, named as Sayyed Omar, was still unaccounted for. The company would issue a written statement on the disaster later on Saturday, he added.

Rescue workers have recovered 195 bodies from the Red Sea and saved 400 people, but about 800 more, most of them Egyptian workers returning from Saudi Arabia, are missing.

The director of the Red Sea Ports Authority, Major-General Mahfouz Taha, said 378 survivors had come ashore on the Egyptian side. The Saudi authorities said they had picked up 22.

Survivors said a fire broke out below deck shortly after the 35-year-old vessel left the Saudi port of Duba on Thursday evening with 1,272 passengers and a crew of about 100.

The ship began to list but the crew continued to sail out into the Red Sea rather than turn back to the Saudi port, they told reporters in the Egyptian port of Safaga, where the ferry should have landed early on Friday.

Egyptian survivor Shahata Ali said the passengers had told the captain about the fire but he told them not to worry.

"We were wearing lifejackets but they told us there was nothing wrong, told us to take them off and they took away the lifejackets. Then the boat started to sink and the captain took a boat and left," he added, speaking to Reuters Television.

"The captain was the first to leave and we were surprised to see the boat sinking," added Khaled Hassan, another survivor.

Other survivors told similar stories.

"There was a fire but the crew stopped the people from putting on lifejackets so that it wouldn't cause a panic," said Abdel Raouf Abdel Nabi.

"There was a blaze down below," said Nader Galal Abdel Shafi, another arrival on the same rescue boat. "The crew said 'Don't worry, we will put it out.' When things got really bad the crew just went off in the lifeboats and left us on board."

FIRE BROKE OUT ON VEHICLE

Shirin Hassan, the head of the maritime section of the Egyptian Ministry of Transport, told state television the fire seemed to have broken out on a vehicle on the lower car deck.

The crew thought they had put it out but it flared up again, he said, citing a preliminary analysis.

It was not immediately clear why coastguards did not appear to have received any distress signal from the ferry.

State news agency MENA reported Hassan saying another ship, the Saint Catherine, established contact with the ferry's second officer who was in a lifeboat after the ship sank. Hassan said military rescue teams were alerted immediately afterwards.

Transport Minister Mohamed Loutfi Mansour told the British Broadcasting Corporation rescuers had located the second officer and expected him to provide useful information.

Egyptian President
Hosni Mubarak, who has ordered an immediate investigation into the disaster, visited some of the injured in a hospital in the port of Hurghada on Saturday.

Mubarak ordered the government to pay 30,000 Egyptian pounds ($5,200) in compensation to each of the families of the dead and 15,000 pounds to each of the survivors, MENA said.

In Safaga, riot police fired four tear gas canisters at angry relatives of the passengers after some in the crowd had thrown stones at the police holding them back at the gate to the port, witnesses said.

An official read out a partial list of the names of survivors to the assembled relatives.

Fathi Kamel cried out: "Allahu Akbar (God is Greatest)" when he heard that his nephew was among the survivors.

Others broke down in tears when the reading ended and they had not heard the names they were waiting for.

Egyptian presidential spokesman Suleiman Awad said on Friday there may not have been enough lifeboats.

"The speed with which the ship sank and the lack of sufficient lifeboats indicate there was some deficiency," he told Egyptian television.

A shipping company official said the Saudi authorities had confirmed that everything was in order when the ship sailed.

MENA said the passenger list included more than 1,000 Egyptians, as well as other nationalities, including Saudis, Syrians, and a Canadian.

A sister ship of the sunken ferry, the Al Salam 95, sank in the Red Sea in October after a collision with a Cypriot commercial vessel. All but four of the passengers were saved.

(Additional reporting by Andrew Hammond in Saudi Arabia, Amil Khan and Jonathan Wright in Cairo)

How did the ferry sink? A tragic loss.

LOL@ the captain...pussy

Holy Shit, last night, I had a dream about Moses parting the Red Sea, and then it killing Pharaoh and all of his men. Coincidence?

Red Sea ferry survivors say captain fled

An official at el-Salam Maritime Transport Company, which owned the Al Salam 98, said the captain, named as Sayyed Omar, was still unaccounted for. The company would issue a written statement on the disaster later on Saturday, he added.

"We were wearing lifejackets but they told us there was nothing wrong, told us to take them off and they took away the lifejackets. Then the boat started to sink and the captain took a boat and left," he added, speaking to Reuters Television.

"The captain was the first to leave and we were surprised to see the boat sinking," added Khaled Hassan, another survivor.

Other survivors told similar stories.

"There was a fire but the crew stopped the people from putting on lifejackets so that it wouldn't cause a panic," said Abdel Raouf Abdel Nabi.

"There was a blaze down below," said Nader Galal Abdel Shafi, another arrival on the same rescue boat. "The crew said 'Don't worry, we will put it out.' When things got really bad the crew just went off in the lifeboats and left us on board."



Condolences over the mass drownings poured in from around the globe, except for the United States, where president Bush had this to say: "Omar, you're doing a heckuva job!"