Foreign vessels rescued 246, says ports officer

FOREIGN vessels rescued 246 people when the mv Rabaul Queen sank on Feb 2, PNG Ports security officer John Benjamin said last Friday.
Benjamin told Commission of Inquiry lawyer Mal Varitimos that he went personally on board the foreign vessels with Customs officers and did a head count of survivors.
“I’m confident (of that number) because I helped in removing all the survivors from the foreign vessels,” he told Varitimos.
The number of survivors, as well as the total number of passengers on board the ill-fated ferry, has been a cloudy issue.
The Morobe Disaster Centre has told the inquiry its revised figures show that 230 were rescued, while it had 230 on its list of those missing.
Ferry owner and operator Peter Sharp has handed over manifests showing a total of 376 people, including 14 crew members and two canteen boys, on board at the time of the sinking.
Benjamin told the inquiry three foreign vessels – mv MOL Summer, mv MSC Carole and mv Cap Scott – had been heavily involved in rescuing survivors.
Benjamin said at 12.30am on Friday, Feb 3, he went with Customs officers on a tug boat to MOL Summer to collect the first group of survivors.
“I was on board when the first lot of people were assisted by the crew members of the vessel.
“They were walking down the gangways down to the vessel and many of them could not walk by themselves so we assisted by helping to lift them up from the gangway or ladder down to the vessel,” Benjamin said.
He said 116 survivors were taken to Lae wharf on the first trip.
He said on the second trip to the MSC Carole he boarded the vessel and after doing a head count he came up with 53 survivors.
“After removing 53 survivors from MSC Carole, we went to the other vessel, mv Cap Scott.
“When we arrived we only removed nine survivors on board that vessel.
“After removing those nine survivors we went to the other vessel, which was the mv Zhong He.
“When we arrived we got 29 survivors on board and the total that boarded the vessel was 91.
“So we advised the captain to report back to the main wharf at Lae Port,” Benjamin said.
“We discharged the 91 survivors on arrival and they were directed to the police and disaster personnel on ground level and they were tagged and directed to waiting vehicles to go to hospital.”
Henry Kepas, a nursing officer at Angau Memorial Hospital, was summoned to produce a list of survivors who were treated at the hospital, and confirmed that 246 survivors had been taken in for treatment.
He produced a report dated Feb 3, containing a list of survivors treated totalling 247 people treated but said a later check showed one of the survivors, Robin Huas, had been recorded twice.