Rescuers search bay for missing 100

Coast guard firemen train a hose on the smouldering hull of the Superferry 14 in Mariveles Bataan yesterday as rescuers prepare to board the vessel in search of missing passengers. Officials say between 70 and 112 could be missing after the ferry caught fire before dawn on Friday. PHOTO: AFP

Rescuers searched yesterday for about 100 passengers missing in a ferry fire that killed at least one person, deploying aircraft and ships in Manila Bay and waiting for the smoldering ship to cool down to probe the wreckage.

Authorities also began investigating the cause of the fire that gutted the Superferry 14 on Friday shortly after it left Manila for central and southern islands.

Most of the 744 passengers and the entire crew of 155 jumped into the sea or boarded rescue boats. About 100 passengers, however, remained missing.

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo said the search "will not be called off until all of them are accounted for."

"The authorities will get to the bottom of this incident ... and take steps to ensure it does not happen again," she said in a statement, calling for stricter implementation of maritime laws.

Witnesses reported a powerful explosion that sparked an inferno that killed at least one person and injured 12 others.

There had been fears that the explosion may have been an act of terrorism, but coast guard Vice Admiral Arturo Gosingan said the ferry was thoroughly checked by a team with bomb-sniffing dogs before it left Manila at 11pm on Thursday. The fears were heightened by the sentencing in a Manila court on Friday of two Muslim extremists to life in prison for kidnapping an American in 2000.

"In the inspection of baggage and passengers, we can say that we didn't see anything planted, like bombs or anything destructive," Gosingan told radio station DZMM.

Police and fire investigators went to western Bataan province along Manila Bay, where the 10,000-tonne steel-hulled ship was towed to shallow waters, to try to determine the cause of the fire. The investigation will proceed along with a search of the ship for the missing, Gosingan said.

Gina Virtusio, spokeswoman for the ship's owner, WG&A, said the fire started in the tourist section on the third deck, which includes air-conditioned sleeping cabins and a dining area.

She said the crew did a fast check of the ship to ensure no passengers were left behind before the evacuation. However, she couldn't rule out the possibility that some people might have stayed on the ship.

"Of course, we cannot confirm until we're able to account for all the missing," Virtusio said.

Relatives of the missing, many of them sleepless from waiting for news of their loved ones, gathered at Manila's coast guard headquarters.

"My mother was there," said a teary-eyed Rowena Caniasa, whose 71-year-old mother was among the passengers.

"We were assured by the coast guard that nobody was left on the ship," she said, wondering why her mother had not been found.

WG&A said the fire broke out near Corregidor Island, about 70km southwest of Manila. In addition to the 702 paying passengers and a crew of 155, there were 42 passengers or children who didn't pay for the trip.

Coast Guard Apprentice Jess Galicah said the ship had a capacity of 1,672 passengers. It was built in Japan about 15 years ago and had been operated by WG&A for the last three years.

The Philippines was the site of the world's worst peacetime maritime disaster when a ferry sank after colliding with a fuel tanker in 1987, killing 4,340 people.

Following a collision between a wooden ferry and a steel-hulled passenger ship last May that killed at least 25 people, Arroyo promised to strictly enforce navigation rules.