Rescue crews held out hope that they would find nine people who were in a Japanese fishing vessel that sank to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean after colliding with a US Navy nuclear-powered attack submarine.
Twenty-six survivors who were stranded amid the debris and covered with diesel fuel from the crash were brought to shore. The boat was carrying high school students who were learning how to fish.
The USS Greeneville came up under the 54m boat, ripping the engine room open and causing two resounding booms. Seconds later, water flooded the vessel, sinking it within minutes, said a coast guard translator describing the Friday collision 14km south of Waikiki.
PHOTO: AP
"Most of the people were below deck in the rooms or galley," said Petty Officer Michael Carr, who interviewed the survivors. "After the lights went out, everyone started yelling that the water was coming into the ship. That's when most of the people we saw started fleeing."
The fishing boat carried 35 people, including 20 crew members, two teachers and 13 students from the Uwajima Fisheries High School in the southwestern Japanese prefecture of Ehime. The missing included four high school students, two teachers and three crew members.
The boat, the Ehime Maru, left Japan on Jan. 10 to hunt for tuna, swordfish and shark.
The navy and coast guard hoped to find people clinging to the wreckage. "We found some debris earlier today, but no sign of survivors yet," said coast guard spokesman Lieutenant Greg Fondran.
The survivors huddled in three life rafts before being rescued. Petty Officer Thomas Kron, who was on the coast guard patrol boat, said the survivors were soaked with diesel fuel that spilled when the boat sank.
"They seemed like they were in shock. They were fatigued by the time we got there," he said. "Some of them were seasick and some of them were glad to see us."
The survivors were taken to the coast guard station at Honolulu Harbor's Sand Island. Some walked off on their own; others were carried on stretchers and covered in blankets.
Fondran said none appeared to be seriously injured. A wounded shoulder appeared to be the worst injury, he said.
Twelve were taken to local hospitals for treatment of minor injuries while 14 were cared for at the base, including showers to wash off the fuel, he said.
Dressed in blue jump suits, the survivors lined up to use the single phone available to them at the base, to let their families in Japan know that they were safe.
Japanese officials said they were scrambling to coordinate a response to the accident.
"It's a bit chaotic right now," said Uwajima municipal official Masanori Mori. "There's a great deal of shock."
Mori said the Ehime Prefectural government had set up a crisis center to assist families and gather information on the accident.
DEMOGRAPHICS: Robotics is the most promising answer to looming labor woes, the long-term care system and national contingency response, an official said Taiwan is to launch a five-year plan to boost the robotics industry in a bid to address labor shortages stemming from a declining and aging population, the Executive Yuan said yesterday. The government approved the initiative, dubbed the Smart Robotics Industry Promotion Plan, via executive order, senior officials told a post-Cabinet meeting news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s population decline would strain the economy and the nation’s ability to care for vulnerable and elderly people, said Peter Hong (洪樂文), who heads the National Science and Technology Council’s (NSTC) Department of Engineering and Technologies. Projections show that the proportion of Taiwanese 65 or older would
Nvidia Corp yesterday unveiled its new high-speed interconnect technology, NVLink Fusion, with Taiwanese application-specific IC (ASIC) designers Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯) and MediaTek Inc (聯發科) among the first to adopt the technology to help build semi-custom artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure for hyperscalers. Nvidia has opened its technology to outside users, as hyperscalers and cloud service providers are building their own cost-effective AI chips, or accelerators, used in AI servers by leveraging ASIC firms’ designing capabilities to reduce their dependence on Nvidia. Previously, NVLink technology was only available for Nvidia’s own AI platform. “NVLink Fusion opens Nvidia’s AI platform and rich ecosystem for
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it is building nine new advanced wafer manufacturing and packaging factories this year, accelerating its expansion amid strong demand for high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI) applications. The chipmaker built on average five factories per year from 2021 to last year and three from 2017 to 2020, TSMC vice president of advanced technology and mask engineering T.S. Chang (張宗生) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Hsinchu City. “We are quickening our pace even faster in 2025. We plan to build nine new factories, including eight wafer fabrication plants and one advanced
‘WORLD’S LOSS’: Taiwan’s exclusion robs the world of the benefits it could get from one of the foremost practitioners of disease prevention and public health, Minister Chiu said Taiwan should be allowed to join the World Health Assembly (WHA) as an irreplaceable contributor to global health and disease prevention efforts, Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said yesterday. He made the comment at a news conference in Taipei, hours before a Taiwanese delegation was to depart for Geneva, Switzerland, seeking to meet with foreign representatives for a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the WHA, the WHO’s annual decisionmaking meeting, which would be held from Monday next week to May 27. As of yesterday, Taiwan had yet to receive an invitation. Taiwan has much to offer to the international community’s
RSS