Evacuation came too late for many on sinking ferry

Accounts from surviving crew members suggest that a delay in evacuating the ship may have led to a loss of precious time and deprived many passengers of the opportunity to escape as The Sewol sank off the South Korean coast.

South Korean relatives of passengers on board a capsized ferry cry as they wait for news about their loved ones, at a gym in Jindo, South Korea. The frantic search for nearly 300 people, most of them Show more

MOKPO, South Korea // An immediate evacuation order was not issued for the ferry that sank off South Korea’s southern coast because officers on the bridge were trying to stabilise the vessel after it started to list, a crew member said on Thursday.

The first instructions from the captain were for the passengers to put on life jackets and stay put, and it was not until about 30 minutes later that he ordered an evacuation, Oh Yong-seok, a 58-year-old crew member, said. But Oh said he wasn’t sure if the captain’s order, given to crew members, was actually relayed to passengers on the public address system.

Several survivors also said that they never heard any evacuation order.

The loss of that precious time may have deprived many passengers of the opportunity to escape as The Sewol sank on Wednesday, not far from the southern city of Mokpo.

Nine people, including five students and two teachers, were confirmed dead, but the toll was expected to jump amid fears that the missing 287 passengers – many high school students – were dead. The confirmed fatalities include a female crew member in her 20s, five high school students and two teachers. Coast guard officials put the number of survivors Thursday at 179.

The increasingly anxious search for the missing was hampered Thursday by strong currents, rain and bad visibility.

There were 475 people aboard, including 325 students on a school trip to the tourist island of Jeju in the south of the country. The ferry had travelled overnight from Incheon on the north-western coast of South Korea, and was three hours short of its destination when the ship began to list. The cause is not yet known.

The Sewol now sits – with just part of its keel visible – in waters off Mokpo, about 470km from Seoul.

Mr Oh, a helmsmen on the ferry with 10 years’ shipping experience, said that when the crew gathered on the bridge and sent a distress call the ship was already listing more than 5 degrees, the critical angle at which the ship can be brought back to even keel.

At about that time, a third mate reported that the ship could not be righted, and the captain ordered another attempt, which also failed. A crew member then tried to reach a lifeboat but tripped, prompting the first mate to suggest to the captain that everyone should evacuate, Mr Oh said.

The captain agreed and ordered an evacuation, but Mr Oh said that amid the confusion and chaos on the bridge he does not recall the message being conveyed on the public address system.

By then it was impossible for crew members to move to passengers’ rooms to help them because the ship was tilted at an impossibly acute angle. The delay in evacuation also likely prevented lifeboats being deployed.

“We couldn’t even move one step. The slope was too big,” said Mr Oh, who escaped with about a dozen others, including the captain.

Passenger Koo Bon-hee, 36, said many people were trapped inside by windows that were too hard to break. He wanted to escape earlier but an announcement said passengers should stay put.

“The rescue wasn’t done well. We were wearing life jackets. We had time,” said Mr Koo from a hospital bed in Mokpo where he was treated for minor injuries. “If people had jumped into the water ... they could have been rescued. But we were told not to go out.”

It is not clear if the captain’s actions violated any procedures, and he may have believed at the time that it was still possible to control the vessel, which would have made the order to evacuate unnecessary.

Worried and angry parents of the students gathered at Danwon High School in Ansan, which is near Seoul, while other relatives assembled on Jindo, an island near where the ferry slipped beneath the surface, leaving only the blue-tipped, forward edge of the keel visible.

In Mokpo, a city close to the accident site, relatives of the dead students wailed and sobbed as ambulances drove away with the bodies, headed to Ansan. The families, who spent a mostly sleepless night at the Mokpo hospital, followed the ambulances in their cars. At the school, some desperate relatives lashed out in frustration, screaming threats at journalists. On Jindo Island, also near the accident site, one woman passed out and was carried to an ambulance.

The family of one of the dead, 24-year-old teacher Choi Hye-jung, spoke about a young woman who loved to boast of how her students would come to her office and give her hugs.

“She was very active and wanted to be a good leader,” her father, Choi Jae-kyu, 53, said at Mokpo Jung-Ang Hospital while waiting for the arrival of his daughter’s body. Choi’s mother, sitting on a bench at the hospital, sobbed quietly with her head bent down on her knee.

While more than 400 rescuers searched nearby waters, coast guard spokesman Kim Jae-in said that in the next two days, three vessels with cranes onboard would arrive to help with the rescue and salvage the ship. Divers were working in shifts in an attempt to get inside the vessel, he said, but strong currents wouldn’t allow them to enter.

Mr Kim said that divers planned to pump oxygen into the ship to help any survivors, but first they had to get inside the ferry.

The water temperature in the area was about 12 degrees Celsius, cold enough to cause signs of hypothermia after about 90 minutes of exposure, officials said. The ocean was 37 metres deep in the area.

*Associated Press