18 Ukrainian Sailors Feared Dead in HK

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Eighteen Ukrainian sailors were feared dead Monday after they were trapped underwater in their capsized tugboat in Hong Kong for nearly 45 hours amid strong currents, a salvage company said.

"Their chances for survival are very slim," spokesman Zhang Jianwen of China's Guangzhou Salvage Bureau told The Associated Press in a phone interview.

Strong currents were hindering efforts, government spokeswoman Heidi Liu said.

Zhang said bureau divers had found no bodies or survivors. He said divers were tying the Ukrainian tugboat and preparing to move it to shallower water from its current depth of 115 feet to ease rescue efforts.

The preparations were expected to take several days. A large Chinese salvage ship would be sent to Hong Kong from nearby waters and would arrive Friday or Saturday, Zhang said.

Earlier, officials had said the sailors could have found a pocket of air that might enable them to survive. However, divers did not hear any return signal when they knocked on the capsized boat Sunday.

The tugboat Neftegaz 67 — which had been detained in Hong Kong in 2003 with safety problems — sank and has been lying upside down underwater since late Saturday, when it collided with Chinese cargo ship Yao Hai in waters northwest of Hong Kong's outlying Lantau island.

The 264-foot-long Ukrainian vessel sank quickly but the Chinese ship suffered only bow damage and stayed afloat, officials said. Only seven of the 25 on the Ukrainian ship were found.

Documents from Hong Kong's Marine Department said that the Neftegaz 67 was detained in September 2003 because the ship did not provide "means of escape" or "escape breathing apparatus," and ship personnel were not familiar with safety procedures.

It was not immediately clear if those problems were addressed during the detention. Government spokeswoman Liu said she could not immediately comment.

People who answered the phone at Chernomorneftegaz, the Ukrainian oil and gas exploration company that operates Neftegaz 67, hung up on several calls from the AP.

"We are hoping for the best," Chernomorneftegaz chairman Anatoly Prisyazhnyuk said in comments televised Monday.

The cause of the Saturday's accident was not immediately clear. Officials say weather conditions were reasonable at the time and neither ship was overloaded.

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18 Ukrainian Sailors Trapped Underwater

AOL

Sun Mar 23

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