CORFU (Greece), Feb 21 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Greek rescuers on Monday resumed the search for 10 people still missing from a ferry fire that has killed at least one truck driver.
Television footage showed smoke still billowing from the Italian-flagged Euroferry Olympia, more than three days after a fire ripped through the vessel as it sailed from Igoumenitsa in Greece to Brindisi in Italy with nearly 300 people aboard.
Most of the passengers were quickly evacuated, and a 21-year-old Belarussian truck driver emerged alive on Sunday.
But 10 other truck drivers — seven Bulgarians, two Greeks and one Turk — remain unaccounted for.
The body of a 58-year-old Greek truck driver was recovered Sunday, the first confirmed fatality of the accident.
On Monday, more than 40 firefighters were taking part in the search and rescue operation with tugboats and coastguard vessels on standby nearby, amid reports that the weather was due to deteriorate later on Monday.
“It is a very difficult operation,” a fire department spokeswoman said. “There is major thermal stress and a lot of smoke.”
Rescue coordinator Dimitris Kontogiannis told Greek public television ERT that temperatures on board the smouldering ferry “are over 400 degrees Celsius (752 Fahrenheit) in some areas.”
Two of those rescued were Afghan nationals not on the ferry manifest, sparking fears that more undocumented passengers might also have been onboard.
The missing drivers reportedly slept in their vehicles because cabins on the ferry were unsuitable, according to the Greek truck drivers’ union.
“We had many complaints about living conditions for the drivers,” union chairman Akis Dermatis told ERT.
“The cabins are, to put it mildly, like stables,” the wife of one of the missing Greek truckers, Vana Bekiari, told reporters at Corfu harbour as she waited for news on the rescue operation.
“Four drivers are placed in a single cabin in the midst of a pandemic,” she said.
The ferry’s owner, Grimaldi Lines, rejected the accusations, saying in a statement on Sunday that there was plenty of cabin room, and that an inspection by the authorities in the port of Igoumenitsa two days before the fire had been “satisfactory”.
Greek daily Kathimerini over the weekend said the Greek trucker union had since June 2017 warned about conditions on the Olympia as well as another ferry belonging to Grimaldi Lines.
The last fire onboard a ship in the Adriatic occurred in December 2014 on the Italian ferry Norman Atlantic, in which 13 people died. — NNN-AGENCIES
