Quote:
Originally Posted by Drama Queen
(Post 66360)
OH now that's not funny.... did that really happen? I must have missed that news. Lord... that'd be our luck... that or us falling off the balcany! :winkgrin
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SANTORINI, Greece (AP) -- Greek rescuers searched for two French tourists who were missing after the evacuation of a Greek cruise ship which ran aground off the Aegean island of Santorini on Thursday and sank on Friday, authorities said.
A 45-year-old Frenchman and his 16-year-old daughter were missing from among 1,153 passengers safely evacuated from the Greek-registerd Sea Diamond cruiser.
"Greek coastguard crews and vessels along with divers are searching the area where the cruiser sank for the two missing people", Merchant Marine Ministry spokesman Andreas Theofilou told Reuters. (Watch the cruise ship's last moments )
The 22,412-ton Sea Diamond, run by Louis Cruise Lines, ran aground just minutes away from the shore of the picturesque island, one of Greece's most popular tourists destinations. It listed and was evacuated within a few hours.
Louis Cruise Lines said there were 730 Americans, 112 Spaniards, 100 French and many other foreign nationals on board, including Germans, Britons and Australians, and 390 crew.
The Merchant Marine Ministry said another Louis Cruise ship transported 296 passengers and 38 crew to the port of Piraeus on Friday. The rest of the passengers and the crew were expected in Piraeus later in the day.
He said some of the passengers had already returned home, while others were accommodated in hotels in the Greek capital.
The ship slowly sank a few meters (yards) off Santorini's rocky coast on Friday, causing a small oil slick which was being cleaned up by coastguard crews.
"Private vessels were also expected in the area to pump remaining fuel out of the vessel," Theofilou said.
The cruiser left the port of Piraeus on Monday for a five-day island cruise and had been due to return on Friday.
It ran aground in well-chartered waters near a Santorini port and the company said it was conducting an investigation into the reasons for the incident.
In September 2000, 82 people drowned when the Express Samina ferry hit rocks and sunk off the island of Paros, a disaster that led to a major improvement of Greek ferry safety standards.
'Big jolt'
At least two school groups from Canada, more than 100 Spaniards and a crew of almost 400 were also on board Sea Diamond when the ship hit the rocks off the island of Santorini shortly before 4 p.m.
"A lot of us were taking pictures when we were coming into Santorini. All of a sudden, there was this big jolt," said Catherine Small, 17, one of more than two dozen students from North Carolina on board. (Watch passengers flee the listing ship )
"The ship was really far tilted. It was actually kind of freaking us out -- scary," said Small, who attends Chapel Hill High School.
Passengers said most people remained calm though there were some tense moments waiting for the rescue.
"People were nervous, women were screaming and it was a struggle to get to a life jacket. said passenger Ben Kucenko, a telecoms technician from Jeelong, Australia. "We were scared the boat was going to tip over. We could barely walk."
Tiffany Gittens, an event coordinator from New York, said at first passengers mistook the sound of rocks screeching against the boat for an anchor dropping.
"We were all sitting in the dining room, and the boat started to tilt and it started to tilt more to the other side," Gittens told the Associated Press, speaking by telephone from Santorini after her rescue.
"Everyone was pretty calm. A lot of the kids that were under 18, they looked pretty nerve-wracked. ... You'd see glasses fly by, and things got broken but everybody was pretty calm," she said. "They got us all on one side of the boat and we put on our life jackets. The (crew) did a pretty good job, they were well prepared for what happened."
More than a dozen ships were involved in the rescue effort, along with six navy rescue helicopters, two military transport planes and four warships.
"The ship was evacuated quickly and successfully. ... No one had as much as a nose bleed," Merchant Marine Minister Manolis Kefaloyiannis said.
"With a ship this size, it's like dealing with a 12-story building. It's a difficult operation," he said.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed
