Order to leave too late, crewman on ferry says

South Korean divers fight strong currents Thursday as they attempt to get inside the capsized ferry off southern South Korea to search for survivors.
South Korean divers fight strong currents Thursday as they attempt to get inside the capsized ferry off southern South Korea to search for survivors.

MOKPO, South Korea - The captain of a doomed ferry delayed evacuation for half an hour after a South Korean transportation official ordered preparations to abandon ship, according to a transcript of the ship-to shore exchange and interviews with a crew member.

photo

AP

A relative of a missing ferry passenger is overcome by emotion Thursday as she and others wait for news about their loved ones at the port on Jindo Island, South Korea.

The order by an unidentified official at the Jeju Vessel Traffic Services Center to put on life jackets and prepare for evacuation came just five minutes after a Wednesday morning distress call by the Sewol ferry. A crewman on the ship said the evacuation order wasn’t made for another 30 minutes.

The delay in the evacuation raised more questions about whether quick action could have saved scores of passengers still missing today.

The confirmed death toll from Wednesday’s sinking off southern South Korea was 28; most of the bodies were found floating in the ocean, the coast guard said. But the number was expected to rise, as about 270 people are missing, many of them high school students on a class trip. Officials said there were 179 survivors.

Divers worked in shifts Thursday to try to get into the sunken vessel, but strong currents would not allow them to enter, said coast guard spokesman Kim Jae-in.

Strong currents and rain hampered rescue attempts as they entered a third day. Officials said this morning in a statement that divers were still trying to enter the ship, but they had begun pumping oxygen inside to help any survivors.

But there were doubts about whether any survivors would be found on the ship 48 hours after it sank. The water temperature in the area was about 54 degrees Fahrenheit, cold enough to cause signs of hypothermia after about 90 minutes of exposure.

Kim said two vessels with cranes arrived and would help with the rescue and to salvage the ferry, which sank not far from the southern city of Mokpo and now sits with just part of its keel visible. But salvage operations hadn’t started yet because of the rescue attempts.

As the rescue attempt continued, Kim Soo-hyun, a senior coast guard official, said investigators were trying to determine whether the captain got on one of the first rescue boats.

Out of 29 crew members, 20 people, including the captain, Lee Joon-seok, 68, survived, the coast guard said.

Investigators who questioned Lee said the vessel had made a sharp turn to the left around the time it began to tilt. The Sewol had been sailing slightly off its usual course, they said, and Lee had apparently tried to steer it back. But it was unclear why he had tried such a turn in waters known for their strong currents, or why the turn had caused the ship to lean to one side.

The captain, in a brief, videotaped appearance Thursday, provided no clarity. “I can’t raise my face before the passengers and family members of the missing,” he said.

Kim Han-sik, president of Chonghaejin Marine Co., the ship’s owner, apologized separately, bowing deeply and saying through his tears, “I committed a sin punishable by death. … I am at a loss for words. I am sorry. I am sorry.”

The 480-foot ferry had left Incheon on the northwestern coast of South Korea on Tuesday for the overnight journey to the southern resort island of Jeju. There were 475 people aboard, including 325 students from Danwon High School in Ansan, which is near Seoul.

It was three hours from its destination Wednesday morning when it began to list.

Oh Yong-seok, a helmsman on the ferry with 10 years of shipping experience, said that when the crew gathered on the bridge and sent a distress call, the ship was already listing more than 5 degrees, the angle at which a vessel can be returned to even keel.

The first instructions from the captain were for passengers to put on life jackets and stay where they were, Oh said.

Video obtained by The Associated Press that was shot by a survivor, truck driver Kim Dong-soo, shows the vessel listing severely with people in life jackets clinging to the side to keep from sliding. The initial announcement for passengers to stay in their quarters can be heard.

A third mate reported that the ship could not be righted, and the captain ordered another attempt, which also failed, Oh said. A crew member then tried to reach a lifeboat but fell because the vessel was tilting, prompting the first mate to suggest to the captain that he order an evacuation, Oh said.

About 30 minutes after passengers were told to stay in place, the captain finally gave the order to evacuate, Oh said, adding that he wasn’t sure that in the confusion and chaos on the bridge if the order was relayed to the passengers. Several survivors said they never heard any evacuation order.

By then, it was impossible for crew members to move to passengers’ rooms to help them because the ship was tilted at an impossibly acute angle, he said. The delay in evacuation also likely prevented lifeboats from being deployed.

“We couldn’t even move one step. The slope was too big,” said Oh, who escaped with about a dozen others from the crew, including the captain.

It is not clear if the captain’s actions violated any procedures, and he may have believed at the time that it was still possible to control the vessel, which would have made the order to evacuate unnecessary.

Victims’ families and others blamed the government for its response to the crisis.

“The government floundered, unable even to count the number of those missing correctly,” the country’s leading conservative newspaper, Chosun Ilbo, which has been mostly supportive of the government of President Park Geun-hye, said in an editorial Thursday. “Above all, the people must have felt deeply that South Korea is a country that doesn’t value human lives.”

It cited “unspeakable mistakes and errors” in the ferry’s operation and in the rescue efforts.

“Bring my child back alive!” some parents of the students aboard yelled Thursday, when Park visited an indoor gymnasium on Jindo Island, 11 miles from the site of the sinking, that local officials had turned into a shelter for grieving families.

Park promised “all available resources” for the rescue, and a “thorough investigation and stern punishment for those responsible.”

According to survivors, the students were having a morning break after breakfast, roaming through the floors in small groups and taking pictures on the deck, when the ship began tipping over.

When the situation became critical, survivors said, many students were still on the third floor, where the cafeteria and game rooms were.

“I don’t remember that there was any safety instruction before we boarded the ship,” said Kim Su-bin, 16, a Danwon student who climbed out of the sinking ship and jumped into the water. “Life jackets were on the fourth floor where the sleeping cabins were, but those who were on the third floor at the time had no life jackets.”

Han Hee-min, another 16-year-old student, said all had gone smoothly until he felt the ship “turning too sharply” around 9 a.m. Wednesday.

An investigator, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the government had not yet reached its final conclusions, said it was possible that the ferry’s cargo - which included 180 trucks and cars, and more than 1,100 tons of cargo in shipping containers - had not been tied down properly.

“That might have loosened them and caused them to slide to one side when the ship made its turn, and helped cause the ship to tilt out of control,” the investigator said.

Inside the ship, chaos unfolded, survivors said, as a wall and the floor seemed to exchange positions. Bottles and dishes overturned. The ship’s twisting stairways suddenly became almost impossible to negotiate.

At some point, some survivors said, the lights went out.

Grainy video footage made with a smartphone, and sent to a relative while the ship was sinking, showed frightened passengers huddled in the corner of a room as a voice on the ship’s intercom urged people to “stay inside and wait because the cabins are safer.”

Han Sang-hyuk, a student, blamed the ship crew’s instruction for the high number of missing people, saying that those who stayed in their rooms or were caught in small alleyways between corridors would not have been able to escape.

But Kim Su-bin, the student who survived by climbing out of the ship, thanked Park Ji-young, a member of the crew who was found dead Wednesday, for calming the students and staying behind without a life jacket after helping students get out.

The ship’s communications officer, Kang Haeseong, 32, said he and Park had to make a quick decision. They thought that if passengers fled in a panicked rush, it could make matters worse, he said. Kang said the ship’s crew members had studied the manual on fire drills but never had an evacuation simulation. Few of the ship’s 60 life rafts were used.

“I repeatedly told people to calm themselves and stay where they were for an hour,” he said from his hospital bed on Jindo. “I didn’t have time to look at the manual for evacuation.”

Shin Seong-hee, a Danwon student, was among those who heeded the advice. In a text message she sent to her father, she said she had been told by the ship’s crew that “it was more dangerous to move.” Her father texted back: “I know the rescuers are coming but why don’t you try to come outside?”

“I can’t because the ship is tilting too much,” she replied in a text that was shown to a reporter by her sister, Shin Seong-ah, on Thursday. Shin Seong-hee has not been heard from since.

Another student, Shin Yong-jin, texted to his mother: “Mom, I say this now because I may never be able to say it: I love you.” Shin Yongjin made it out of the ship.

Information for this article was contributed by Foster Klug, Youkyung Lee, Hyung-jin Kim and Jung-yoon Choi of The Assocaited Press and by Choe Sang-Hun, Su-Hyun Lee and Jiha Ham of The New York Times.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 04/18/2014

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