Grieving relatives of hundreds of people believed drowned when two ferries sank during a storm in Bangladesh lined the banks of a notorious river on Monday as hopes dimmed that any more survivors would be found.
Both ferries sank on Sunday during a sudden storm on the rain-swollen Meghna River near Chandpur, about 100 miles southeast of Dhaka.
About 100 people were rescued or swam to safety after the sinkings and so far 60 bodies had been recovered and about 140 people were still unaccounted for, officials said Monday.
Rescuers and salvage workers managed to refloat the larger of the ferries, the Lighting Sun, and pull it to shore. But they have failed to find the smaller ferry, Diganta, which they believe might have been swept downstream.
Ferry carrying about 50 people vanishes
“We will keep searching for the Diganta but chances of finding it are fading,” one rescue operator said.
The double-decker Lighting Sun, which was carrying about 250 people, was heading to Dhaka from Madaripur, while the Diganta, with about 50 people aboard, was sailing from Gournadi to Narayanganj, near the capital.
The ferries sank about the same time just a half mile apart.
The Meghna, one of the country’s four major rivers, has been the scene of more than a dozen ferry disasters in the last two decades.
About 400 people were killed and hundreds still unaccounted for after a triple-decker ferry sank in the same area in July last year.
Officials believe dozens of corpses from the latest accidents could have been swept downstream or become trapped in swirling pools or eddies.
“(It) is impossible to say exactly how many people have died,” said an official at Chandpur on Monday.
It was also proving difficult to ascertain exactly how many passengers were aboard the ferries when they sank.
Vessels often overcrowded
Bangladesh ferries are frequently overcrowded with crew selling extra tickets to supplement paltry pay. Safety standards are lax and inspectors frequently turn a blind eye in exchange for backhanders.
Many of the passengers were believed to have been asleep when the ferries sank after being hit by winds of up to 60 mph.
Ibrahim Hossain, salvage director of Bangladesh Inland Water Transport Authority, said rescue efforts were proving daunting.
Low-lying Bangladesh is criss-crossed by thousands of miles of waterways that are crucial trade and travel routes for the country’s 140 million people.
Every wet season, waterways become torrents and the country is lashed by cyclones that sweep in from the Bay of Bengal.
Inland water transport authority officials say about 1,000 people die in ferry accidents in the country every year, but the number of missing is far more.
But ferry owners say they cannot stick to all the rules meant to protect lives on the rivers.
“There is a risk involved in every mode of transport and we have no hand in God’s acts,” said Badiuzzaman Badal, vice-chairman of the Bangladesh Fery Owners Assoc. Storm warnings are often vague, he said, and cannot always be heeded.
“If we have to operate strictly under storm warnings, we will have to close our entire operations during May and June, when storms occur frequently, which is not feasible,” he said.
