Vanuatu ferry disaster: ‘It’s a miracle anyone survived,’ says rescuer

An Australian pilot who helped locate survivors after a ferry disaster in Vanuatu says: “it is a miracle anyone survived”.

After the ferry MV Matui sank in rough seas on Friday morning, two have died and more than 30 people remain missing.

The ferry departed from Santo at 6am on Friday for Ambae, approximately 96 km away. However, it capsized in large waves.

• READ MORE: One dead and more than 30 missing after ferry sinks off Vanuatu coast in rough seas

According to Luganville MP Matai Seremaiah, the vessel sank at about 9:30am.

Tragically, confusion around the vessel’s status and misinformation meant that it was more than 30 hours before help arrived. Reports suggest 15 people survived the sinking.

Although the current confirmed death toll stands at two, more than 30 people remain missing. One body was recovered over the weekend but another could not be brought back due to bad weather.

Dr Mark Turnbull, a pilot and doctor based on Gaua Island in Torba Province, was one of the first people in the air looking for survivors. Turnbull said he was contacted by an individual to help start the search for survivors:

“The government is pretty slow, even the shipowner was very slow, but there was one individual who was particularly motivated to help,” he said.

“The weather was rough and it wasn’t possible for very small boats to go out, and so they had to send fairly substantial looking ‘smallish’ ships.”

Return to refuel
Dr Turnbull would conduct an aerial search, return to refuel, and then resume the search.

From the air, he was able to see debris and objects floating, which had obviously come out of the vessel.

“We saw drums of fuel, we saw flotation stuff, lots of these lifejackets that had been separated from the people somehow, then this big tank they were hanging onto, and some wheels [and] inner tubes some people had been holding onto as well.”

He told RNZ Pacific about the “big black tank”, a 1000L agricultural tank that had fallen off the ferry.

Dr Turnbull said that a group of survivors told him that they had been clinging to the tank, and during the first night 5 people had died. Apparently, the second day they were in the water, the survivors let go of the tank and went separate ways to seek rescue.

The survivors Turnbull spoke to were weak and extremely dehydrated from their ordeal. Almost all of them had swollen eyes from exposure. One of the survivors had very swollen lips and had been attacked by fish “he was feeling wounded and weak”.

Dr Turnbull said that one of the survivors had swum all the way from where the ferry sank to Santo to raise the alarm that the vessel had sunk. Until then, it was believed that it was merely adrift. This raised the urgency level of search and rescue efforts.

‘Dire situation’
He said that the terrible weather conditions would have made survival in the water very difficult.

“It was a dire situation, terrible weather, hard to do search and rescue because the wind was so horrific, up to 30 knots and sometimes gusting to even higher than that”

After talking to survivors, Dr Turnbull said that the vessel was probably hit broadside by a large wave.

This had happened very suddenly, so there was no time to evacuate properly before the passengers and crew found themselves in the water – without proper survival gear.

He said without a working liferaft people were scrambling for “little bits and pieces” to hold onto to stay afloat.

“It’s amazing that anybody survived that, for them to travel such a long distance was incredible, it was truly incredible, the distance they travelled was massive, it was huge.”

“Those conditions through the night, with the waves pounding at them , it’s really amazing that anybody survived.”

Dr Turnbull said he hopes this will be a turning point for search and rescue procedures in Vanuatu because the initial effort to locate and rescue survivors in this instance was very poorly coordinated. Private citizens had to step forward and coordinate the rescue attempts before official rescue efforts were organised.

“I hope this is an opportunity for the leadership of that area of Maritime search and rescue. That they will come up with a much more coordinated plan. We were not sure exactly who reported the ferry’s GPS coordinates, as things were poorly organised.”

Dr Turnbull, who operates the Wings of Hope Flying Doctor Service, said most of the search and rescues have since been called off, but he was aware of some still happening.