Hundreds trapped as ferry catches fire between Greece and Italy

© AP Photo/SKAI TV Station



Ten hours after the fire began, some 131 people had been rescued, leaving 347 on board according to the Italian navy.

Hundreds of people have been stranded for ten hours on the top deck of a burning ferry in the Adriatic sea as strong gales and rough waves hampered attempts to save them.

As the sun set, rescue helicopters had resorted to the slow process of lifting the passengers on board the Norman Atlantic from the top deck in pairs, as a fire blazed around them.

At least two Britons were among the 478 people who were travelling on the car ferry between Patras in Greece and Ancona in northern Italy.

The mother of Nicholas Channing-Williams, a British horse rider who lives in Greece, said she had spoken to her son, but that the line had been cut off.

"People in Greece are saying that their communications have been cut off, so as not to hamper rescue operations which I can fully understand," said Dotty Channing-Williams,to Sky News. "They're keeping me updated via the news coming over the Greek television. But nevertheless it is very, very worrying and very scary.

The fire broke out on the car deck of the five-year-old ferry at dawn, as it was passing 44 nautical miles north of Corfu, destroying the ship's steering mechanism and leaving it drifting towards the Albanian coast.

Photographs showed the flames quickly spreading through the decks as passengers began to evacuate. Roughly 120 people were able to leave the ship, and were picked up by a nearby freighter, before the fire cut off access to the lifeboats.

"The fire is still burning," said Sofoklis Styliaras, a Greek passenger, to Mega television. "On the lower deck, where the lifeboats are, our shoes were starting to melt from the heat. There is nowhere else for us to go. It is impossible to walk on the lower deck because of the heat."

© Associated Press

Smoke billows from the Norman Atlantic after it caught fire.

The Italian media reported that one passenger had died after a couple jumped into the sea to try to reach a lifeboat, but officials said they could not confirm the death.

The rest of the passengers were left stranded in a force 8 gale on the top deck while rescue teams battled to reach them. Eight Italians succumbed to hypothermia before being rescued and flown to a military airport in the south eastern Italian region of Puglia.

Ten hours after the fire began, some 131 people had been rescued, leaving 347 on board according to the Italian navy. Two Italian and two Greek helicopters were airlifting passengers to safety, according to the Greek Defence ministry, but with each trip taking 15 minutes, the operation was scheduled to continue throughout the night.

"We are committed to rescuing everyone on the ship, and are trying to ensure that nobody will be left unaided," said Greece's merchant marine minister, Miltiadis Varvitsiotis.

© Associated Press

A woman holds her baby as they are rescued by an Italian Air Force helicopter.

The passenger manifest showed a majority of Greeks on board, but also 54 Turks, 22 Italians, 18 Germans and 9 French. Many of the passengers were commercial lorry drivers, and there were 130 lorries on board.

Among those rescued were two toddlers aged two and three who were winched to safety by helicopter together with their pregnant mother and taken to a hospital in Galatina on the Italian mainland.

Passengers who telephoned Greek television stations gave dramatic accounts of the situation.

"They tried to lower some boats, but not all of us could get in. There is no coordination," one said. "It's dark, the bottom of the vessel is on fire. We are on the bridge, we can see a boat approaching... we opened some boxes and got some life vests, we are trying to save ourselves."

One rescuer who returned from the scene to the southern port of Otranto reported that the Norman Atlantic was keeling over at an angle but Italian officials denied that the ship was in immediate danger of sinking.

Meanwhile, a second emergency in the Adriatic saw two merchant vessels collide in fog off the north-eastern Italian port of Ravenna. Up to four people were missing following the collision and several injured when a Turkish ship and another flying the flag of Belize hit each other.