21 Feared Dead in Tanker Explosion
PORTSMOUTH, Va. – The Coast Guard is continuing to search for 18 people from the tanker Bow Mariner all day on Sunday, calling off the search at dark, with the death toll likely to reach 21 people, all crew from the stricken vessel.
The sudden explosion came after a fire was found on the deck of the ship and a crewman called out a "Mayday" which was heard at Coast Guard Eastern Shore at Chinocteaque. Two commercial fishing vessels which were about 12 miles away, pulled up their nets and rushed to the scene after one of them called the Coast Guard to report a fire ball on the horizon.
The explosion of the tanker has significant implications for the Chesapeake Bay since LNG tankers began ariving every four days at Cove Point, just a few miles from the Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant.
Nine people are accounted for, reports the Coast Guard – six survivors and three dead.
The 570-foot tanker carrying industrial ethanol exploded 50 miles off Chincoteague, Va., shortly after 6 p.m.Saturday, Feb. 28th and sank in international waters. Coast Guard aircraft along with a 47-foot motor lifeboat and the Coast Guard Cutters Albacore and Shearwater were on scene looking for survivors but suspended the search at dark on Sunday.
The Singapore-flagged vessel was transiting from New York to Houston with 24 Filipino and three Greek crewmembers and had been built in 1982. The vessel was carrying more than 3.5 million gallons of industrial ethanol.
Three persons were taken to the Atlantic Coastal Hospital in Berlin, about 30 miles from Ocean City, Maryland and just a short distance by air from the scene of the disaster. Two of the three were Coast Guard rescue swimmers and one crewman. The crewman died at the hospital while the Coast Guard personnel were treated and released.
“With the hypothermia, really the survival rate is in terms of hours not days,” Rear Admiral Sally Brice-O’Hara , commander of the Fifth Coast Guard District, said in Portsmouth Sunday afternoon.
The Coast Guard say that the ship is believed to have remained intact after it sank, though it is unclear how many of its storage tanks were ruptured in the explosion. In addition to the ethanol, there is environmental danger in that it carried 48,000 gallons of diesel fuel and 193,000 gallons of fuel oil.
Spills of those fuels formed a slick covering 9 square miles of the Atlantic on Sunday. The Chesapeake Bay would not fare as well were there a similar disaster here as westerly winds would carry the fuel spill to the Eastern Shore.
Winds and currents are expected to carry the spill further out to sea, however, sparing East Coast beaches, the Coast Guard said.
“With the west winds, we are not expecting any damage to reach the shore line,” Brice-O’Hara said.
The Coast Guard sent out two HH-60 helicopters and a C-130 Hercules search aircraft from the its air station in Elizabeth City, N.C., as well as an HH-65 helicopter from Atlantic City , N.J. They were aided by two 87 -foot patrol boats and a 47 -foot boat from Coast Guard stations on the Eastern Shore. Shortly after 7 p.m., the C-130 arrived over the scene. The crew found a two -mile slick of fuel and oil, deployed life rafts, some apparently empty, and debris from the tanker, already sinking. At 8:41 p.m., the stern of the Bow Mariner slipped below the surface and was gone.