With foreign assistance, Vietnam is searching for the missing Vinalines Queen ship and its crewmen.
Nguyen Anh Vu, general director of Vietnam Marine Cooperation Center (VN MRRC), said among the 28 boats operating in the area where the missing ship sent out the final distress signal, 13 boats have pledged to help.
Vu said the area that would be searched covers 40,000 kilometers and situated between Philippine and Taiwanese seawaters.
In the mean time, Minister of Transport Dinh La Thang has instructed the Vietnam Marine Department and Vietnam National Shipping Lines to hire equipment to search for the missing crewmen and locate the vessel, which went missing upon reaching the area northeast of Luzon Island in the Philippines while carrying 54,400 tons of Nickel ore from Indonesia’s Morowali Port to Ningde Port in China on December 25th.
On December 31st, Tuoi Tre succeeded in contacting the London Courage ship via its satellite phone to communicate with Dau Ngoc Hung, who has been picked up by the British-flagged ship around 350 kilometers (220 miles) away from the site of the accident.
However, Hung wasn’t allowed to say much for information security on the ship.
On December 30, MRRC received information from a Taiwanese rescue agency that the British ship found a man adrift on a life raft on its way to Singapore, 6 days after his own vessel went down under the 5,000m-deep Philippine seas.
Dau Ngoc Hung, the rescued man, said his ship had sunk and he was the only survivor.
The Japanese-built 190 meter (627 feet) Vinalines Queen is one of the largest and most modern cargo ships of the Vietnamese fleet, with a capacity of more than 56,000 tons and an advanced self-protection system that is able to send out emergency signals in potentially hazardous situations. It has been in service for Vinalines since 2005.
Although there seems to be little chance of finding the ship and its crew, some families of the missing victims are still hoping for a miracle.
The family of Ngo Van Lam, who is one of the 22 missing crewmen, said they prayed Lam was still alive because when they used global roaming services to phone him on December 31, they heard the ringing on the other end of the line.
The family of Do Van Cuong from Hai Phong city said the same thing.
Vinalines Shipping Company has asked Interpol Vietnam and global roaming services to verify this information.
