Typhoon Frank left the country devastated, with almost 300 deaths, thousands homeless & flooding all over the country. Seventy of these death were brought about by the sinking of Sulpicio Lines’ M/V Princess of the Stars near the island of Sibugay1 Sibuyan in Romblon. As of the latest accounts, there were at least 48 survivor & more than 700 still missing.
This pose a very important question, why sail when there’s a storm warning at hand?
As far as I can remember, storm signal no. 1 was raised over Metro Manila & neighboring provinces on the night of June 20, 2008. The ill-fated vessel left the Port of Manila on the same night, according to the Philippine Coast Guard’s Policy, it’s in the discretion of the ship’s Captain to sail amidst the storm warning, which what the veteran Captain of the vessel did.
The moment that I learned about the incident, I realized that something was wrong with the policy. The government could have been more cautious in writing such a policy, our country is being visited by more than 20 typhoons every year, we could have been ready for such disaster.
Frogmen from the Philippine Navy is now conducting a search, rescue & recovery on the capsized ship, the hopes of finding living survivor is getting slimmer each day. Relatives of the missing passengers were enraged by what they claim to be “silence & inaction” of the company. Sulpicio Lines promised to shoulder all the expenses for the burial of the dead victims & will give the amount PhP200,000 to the families as damages.
The Board of Marine Inquiry is currently investigating on the matter, my only hope is that those who are responsible will meet the full force of the law & incidents like this will be prevented in the future.
I mourn with the families of the victims, there’s nothing more painful than the “untimely” death of love ones. My prayer goes with them & may they find peace in the midst of such tragedy.
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5 responses so far ↓
1 niko // Jun 26, 2008 at 6:40 pm
i hope that the all of the people in the boat is alive!
2 Jologs // Jun 28, 2008 at 1:04 am
Sulpicio Lines is only simple shipping company, fulfilled all the requirements for the company operations, paid its obligations to the government of the Philippines including the 12% VAT for the fuel for the operation. What was happened to the Ill-fated M/V Princess of the stars was clearly due to national or international calamity that struck not only philippines but some asians countries. Its sails was been cleared by the philippines authorities but unfortunately end with the tragedy. Business wise, the company will shoulder its obligations to the victims and there were committed. We should all blame the philippines government for inadequate action to deal with. Its should be national disaster commission responsible for the retrieval of the remaining victims. Condolences to the relatives of the victims.
3 james a // Jul 4, 2008 at 11:19 am
i hope the company will pay their obligations..
condolence to all who suffered this scenario.
4 kneeko // Jul 14, 2008 at 8:42 pm
bro, Sibuyan Island un hindi sibugay. malapit sa bayan namin sa san fernando, lumubog ung barko. until now bawal ang seafoods.
5 HEIZEL // Jul 16, 2008 at 5:58 pm
for the Sulpicio Lines Staffs and administrator,time to wake up!its not the first time that this tragedy happened,not once,twice,thrice!how many innocent people will die because of your carelessness???for nw,u don’t have any rights to stop searching for those missing bodies of your passengers unless you find it all!
—for those family of the victims of ill fated ferry,i gave my wholeheart condolense for wht had happened!lets all pray for them..Condolense…
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