Ferry fire off Palawan leaves five dead, 84 missing as rescuers find charred remains

Firefighters discovered burnt human remains on Friday inside a ferry that caught fire in Philippine waters two nights earlier, the coast guard said, as the toll from the disaster stood at five dead and 84 missing.

Officials did not say how many additional fatalities the remains represented, adding that further details would be released on Saturday. A coast guard statement said the fire had been declared out and that a response team had carried out a safety assessment of the vessel.

Rescuers had struggled on Thursday to enter the burning ship because of the heat and smoke, and the search for passengers who might have been trapped was suspended overnight. Commodore Noemie Cayabyab, a coast guard spokesperson, said the coast guard, police and other agencies were carrying out the proper recovery and identification of the remains in line with established procedures.

The ferry left Manila on Wednesday evening and was about 7.4 kilometres (4.5 miles) off the village of Turda, near its destination of Coron in Palawan province, when the fire was reported. The cause has not been determined.

Coast guard and other vessels have rescued 43 people, some of them pulled from dark waters as the ferry burned. According to the manifest, 134 people were on board — 117 passengers and 17 crew. The 53-metre (174-foot) vessel was certified to carry 306 passengers and 27 crew. Two passengers listed on the manifest later told authorities they had not boarded, bringing the number of missing to 84.

At a rescue centre in Turda, Lira Daco waited for news of her 20-year-old daughter Cyriel, who is among the missing. “It’s painful to think that your child was asking for help while she was burning alive,” she said. “I don’t know how we can find out which one is my child. It’s OK if she just drowned and we can recover her body and give her a proper burial. But now we can’t recognize or hug her.”

Survivor Arnulfo Nokki Villanueva described the night of the fire in a video broadcast by News5. “The fire quickly spread. That’s when I dropped to the ground and my back was burned,” he said, adding that he jumped from a window. “I wanted to get a life jacket but failed to get one because people were stepping on me. People were in panic.”

Two survivors are tourists from Chile, according to Rachel Conserman, a staff member of the ship’s owner, Atienza Interisland Ferries Inc. She said they were recovering from injuries at a hospital in Coron and that no other foreigners were known to have been on board. The company said in a statement that it was assisting those who had been on the vessel and their families while working with the coast guard and maritime officials to locate the missing and establish the cause of the fire.

Coron is a popular destination known for clear blue waters, limestone cliffs and rock formations. Ferries are a common mode of transport across the Philippine archipelago, and sea accidents occur with some regularity because of storms, poorly maintained vessels, overcrowding and uneven enforcement of safety rules, particularly in remote provinces. In 1987, the ferry Dona Paz sank after colliding with a fuel tanker in the central Philippines, killing more than 4,300 people in the world’s deadliest peacetime maritime disaster.