LUMUT: The crew of a cargo ship saved 18 crew members of another cargo ship from drowning 48 nautical miles from here yesterday.
The crew of Mongolian-registered Hodasco 15, which was on its way from India to China, was rescued by crew members of Boron, a Syrian-registered cargo ship.
The help came in the nick of time as Hodasco 15's crew members were struggling to save themselves as their ship was sinking after a leak in its hull.
The ship developed the problem around 10pm on Sunday.
The Boron crew came to the sinking ship's rescue around 3am yesterday.
According to Malaysian Ma-ritime Enforcement Agency's Lieutenant-Commander Nurul Hizam Zakaria, the agency received news of the incident at 7am yesterday.
"We learnt that Boron was sailing in the waters of Pulau Pangkor and sent three MMEA boats to bring the rescued crew members to shore," he said here yesterday.
The crew -- consisting of 15 Vietnamese, including the captain of the ship, and three Myanmars -- was brought to the Kampung Acheh fisheries jetty around 2.40pm.
"All of them are in good condition. The MMEA will help them.
"However, the source of the incident has yet to be identified. We only learnt that the ship had developed a leak."
Nurul Hizam said it had sent personnel to the site of the incident to check if there was an oil spillage.
Le Hoang Quan, the captain of Hodasco 15, said the ship was carrying 6,045 tonnes of iron ore.
He said upon realising that water had started to enter the ship, he fired emergency shots into the air to attract the attention of ships.
"The help from Boron came at the right moment.
"We thank god that they saw our distress signal," he said at the jetty.
No comments:
Post a Comment