Corruption Caused The Deadliest Shipwreck In History - (Peacetime)

the Donna Paz is the largest fairy disaster in the world claiming almost four and a half thousand lives in a matter of an hour this accident shines the spotlight on an industry that's claimed the lives of thousands more but is it the tip of an iceberg or just bad luck valeriana Duma is 14 years old her employers call her Valerie Valerie works for a family in Tacloban in the Philippines as a housemate her dad doesn't like it but the family can use the extra money one of the perks of the job is when the family travels to Manila and they take Valerie with on the 20th of December 1987 just five days before Christmas Valerie is at the Docks with her employers boarding the Donna Paz Ferry Valerie likes going to Manila but she doesn't care for the fairy Journey it's always crowded and now days before Christmas the fury is more crowded than usual while Valerie's employers have booked tickets they had not thought to bring Valerie until the last minute and so they don't have a ticket for her when they get to the gate they learn that all the seats are sold but the ticket agent takes a small bribe and grants Valerie access with her employer a common practice especially around the holiday seasons as they push past hundreds of people who are sitting and lying in the passageways Valerie realizes there's no place to sit except on the top deck at the very back of the ship Valerie's employers are anxious but they've seen it before they tell Valerie that the ship gets so busy at Christmas that there aren't enough life jackets for everyone on board and so they've bought one for her a small Pang of fear shoots through her stomach she doesn't like the idea of needing a life jacket the Donna Paz is a ferry built in Japan in 1963 when she's launched she has a passenger capacity of 608 people plus crew of around 50 people she relocates to the Philippines in 1975 when her new owners the silpicio lines deploy her to transport up to 1518 passengers between Manila and Cebu in 1979 she catches fire while and Away luckily all 1164 passengers include crew survive because the ship is beached in shallow water which provides an Escape Route the ship is gutted by the fire and written off as a total loss solpicio lines claim on their insurance and then buy the wreck back from the underwriters and rebuild her while they're at it they add another two decks to the original two decks but they don't update her certificate of stability which rates how stable the ship is when she's floating what's more important is the ability to increase the passenger count as a flagship for solpicio lines she's reassigned to a route between Tacloban and Manila with a stop in cat balagan which she completes twice a week the Donna pairs depart Tacloban at 06 30 in the morning stopping at cat balagan and then continues to Manila for arrival at 0400 the next morning Valerie sits quietly huddled on the AFT deck a man near her relieves himself over the side of the ship there are too many people to fight his way to the bathrooms the captain of the Donna Pairs eusebio nazarino and his crew do everything they can to accommodate their passengers or possibly accommodate more passengers luckily the weather is calm and clear the sea is a little choppy but Valerie doesn't mind that much as long as it's warm and dry for a fairy like the Donna pass these conditions are almost ideal and so the passengers and Crews settle in for the journey at around 22 30 the Donna pairs is in the Tablas Strait seemingly out of nowhere an oil tanker appears immediately ahead of the Donna pass she collides with the tanker in an explosion of twisting metal the tank is petrochemical Cargo bursts into flames and pours into the ferry the 51 meter long oil tank of vector is traveling from batan to masbate with over a million liters of gasoline and petrol products she's under chartered by caltex which is a joint venture between Chevron and Texaco the is crewed by 13 people but the captain of the ship and his first mates are not qualified for their positions passengers and crew on board the ferry are jolted awake as panic and Flames engulfed the two ships the Flames from the tanker's cargo are spilling out onto the sea and forming a cauldron of floating Flames that spread hundreds of meters in diameter to avoid the fire in the ship passengers jump overboard into the Flaming sea they have to fight their way through Flames charred bodies black smoke and shock infested waters on the ship passengers search for Life vests but they are locked away and they're certainly not enough for almost four and a half thousand people on the overloaded Ferry the temperature is rising the petrol from the oil tanker continues to spill into the ocean fueling the fire around the two ships Valerie is jolted away from a shallow sleep the man next to her is with his daughter he's shouting for people to get off the ferry that man is Salvador skull a fisherman who's seen flames on boats before and knows how quickly they can spread now Valerie feels something different she's relieved she has a life jacket and terrified that she's going to get to use it but she's not going to wait around to find out if the Flames will make it to the back of the ship she can see the flames on the water and the circle is growing quickly so she jumps overboard with Salvador and his daughter a passing ship sees the explosion and sails towards the Flames it takes the MS Don Claudio an hour to get as close as safely possible and then she throws a net over the side of the ship for survivors to climb in fact she only gets within a two mile radius of the burning ships going closer would mean she would start to sail into patches of fiery water which any sensible Captain would avoid in order to keep his ship and crew safe luckily she comes up to the rear of the Donna pass Valerie Salvador and his daughter are three of only 26 people to survive they had to swim for over an hour to stay out of reach of the ever-growing Ring of Fire caused by the petroleum burning on the surface of the water in fact almost all the people that survived were those that jumped from the back of the Donna Pairs and were lucky enough to swim in the direction of the MS Don Claudio over 4 000 people die in the flames and sinking ships the donopass ferry sinks in 1500 feet of water two hours after she struck the oil tanker Vector which sinks two hours later one Survivor recounts trying to pull his daughter to safety but the skin on her arm slides away and she sinks back into the ocean for a ship that's registered to carry 1518 people the Donna pairs was carrying 4 374 people including the crew Valerie was not the only person to board the ferry without an official ticket the ferry was overloaded by almost 3 1000 people over her authorized limits it takes almost eight hours for the Philippine Coast Guard to be notified then another six hours for them to raise the closest Coast Guard Station the Donna Pairs and the better are long since sank in the weeks and months that follow the question on everyone's mind is how could this happen two vessels at Sea on a calm and clear night Collide and almost four and a half thousand people die the investigation starts to uncover a Litany of offenses between the 13 crew and the vector and the 56 crew on the Donna pairs there was only one sailor on Watch and he was an unqualified Apprentice the crew on the Donna pairs were drinking and certainly not at their assigned stations the captain was watching a movie maritime law requires a watch at all times if crew were on watch at their station they would have seen the oncoming ship with enough time to alter course the blame is ultimately assigned to the tanker which was understaffed the crew on board were not qualified and the tank were was operating without a certificate of inspection but the ferry is Not Without Blame because she's overloaded to the point that passengers are sleeping in the hallways and the ship is listing to one side under the top heavy weight although overloading was not the cause of her sinking more lives were lost because of Corrupt Practices at every level of the inspection process that allowed her to sail with so many passengers all the life vests are locked away and she has no radio to communicate with ships that might be on a collision course these factors contributed to the severity of the accidents but the one thing that would have avoided the accidents entirely is having an appropriate watch system on either one or both ships to me there's one major Omission in the investigation and that comes down to the fact that two ships are operating without any oversight from the law if one ship is poorly manned and unlicensed you could blame the captain but when two ships in the same water suffer the same ailment you have to look at the climates in which they operate the dollar pairs is able to get her certificate of inspection and a license to carry passengers even though she doesn't have an up-to-date certificate of stability after adding two extra decks the Coast Guard who are responsible for inspecting ships to make sure they're not overloaded are accepting bribes to look the other way particularly in the holiday season large oil companies like Chevron and Texaco are chartering ships that aren't properly licensed and don't have qualified crew at every stage of the inspection process the authorities not only aren't doing their job they're actually accepting primes to look the other way while companies put their passengers at risk this culture created an environment that allowed two ships to operate unchecked what likely started as a practice of overbooking by one or two extra passengers turned into overloading the Donna pass by almost three times her registered capacity this culture turned a blind eye to crew members having a beer on Duty and not Manning their stations the same culture of corruption allowed the Mt Vector to sail with an unqualified crew also not at their stations in 2015 silpicio Lions lost their license to carry passengers not before three more of these ships sink with a further loss of almost 1500 lives in the 15 years prior to the Donna pairs accident there were 80 collisions 177 sinkings 53 fires and a total of 4 000 deaths on board ships off the Waters of the Philippines including the diner pairs that's over 10 000 people in a 43-year period That's roughly 232 deaths a year but the Philippines has over 7 000 islands and must rely on ferries for transport by the very nature of being on the sea rather than roads you have to expect there will be accidents at Sea Vietnam has roughly the same population but its geography is not dominated by islands like the Philippines in 2016 the a death toll on the roads in Vietnam is over 24 000 people in just that one year by comparison roads are far more deadly during the investigation into the dynapaz accident senior members of the Coast Guard acknowledged that officials sometimes accept bribes to look the other way they also point out that they're understaffed and don't have the resources to inspect every ship Valerie never received the 500 compensation offered to families of the victims because she was not registered on the Manifest she didn't have enough money to return home and it took 25 years to reunite with her father silpicio lines now sales cargo instead of passengers since 2016 there have been 54 deaths in Maritime accidents making it one of the safest means of Transport in the Philippines

Channel: Waterline Stories

Views: 250,675

Keywords: scuba diving, scuba diving accidents, decompression sickness, accidents, commercial diving, saturation diving, sailing, freediving, dona paz, thalassophobia, ship accidents

Id: -gF4hpj96w0

Length: 12min 9sec (729 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 19 2023