‘Lord, tabangan mo kami’

At first, there was only God to turn to for help when an onboard explosion put the passengers of the SuperFerry 14 in grave peril past midnight yesterday.

"Lord, tabangan mo kami (help us)," uttered Emalinda Calao, 42, as she clutched her two-year-old son, Earl John, to her breast as the blast rocked the ship in the middle of the sealanes just past Corregidor island.

Then the rescuers came.

The explosion was followed by billows of thick, acrid smoke that threatened to suffocate the ferry’s passengers, who scampered in different directions, Calao said. People were shouting and pushing at each other in the ensuing chaos, she recalled.

"I embraced my son tightly as we were pushed by the crowd to the end of the ship," she said. "The smoke was so thick I could hardly breathe."

She recalled hearing more explosions as panic spread among the passengers.

The ship’s crew tried to maintain order and calm the passengers. "Don’t panic. Don’t panic. There’s nothing to worry about," the crew shouted.

Calao climbed to the upper deck of the ferry to escape the smoke.

More fires broke out in the middle of the ship, increasing the passengers’ panic, Calao said. She heard splashes in the water below, indicating that some passengers may have jumped overboard.

As the fire grew in intensity, she heard a voice shouting "Abandon ship!" The passengers were then guided to life rafts that were dropped into the sea.

"I immediately jumped on the life raft fearing I might lose my son," Calao said. Despite sustaining a fractured arm from her jump, she kept hold of Earl John.

Calao, her son and three other passengers were the last people to be plucked out of the sea by the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) at 2 p.m. yesterday.

She had been headed to Bacolod when the explosion happened. Some of the other survivors were identified as Nora Basa, 49; Maryjane Silverio, 40; and Leandro So, 20. Basa sustained burns on her left arm and was given first aid at the PCG dispensary.

Silverio said she was with five relatives aboard the SuperFerry 14, and hopes they survived the fire.

The ship was carrying 702 passengers and 159 crew when it left Manila at 11 p.m. Thursday. The fire broke out on after the first explosion at 12:50 a.m. as the ship was passing El Fraile island, beside Corregidor.

WG&A, which owns the SuperFerry 14, confirmed that two passengers have died and three others were injured in the mishap. The names of the fatalities and injured are still being verified, WG&A said. Over 100 people are missing as of press time.

PCG operating force commander Adm. Damian Carlos said search and rescue operations will continue once the shipboard fire is doused.

"The SuperFerry 14 is still very hot," Carlos said. "We could not enter the ship’s hull to look for more survivors, but there are no more sightings of survivors in the water."

An oil containment apparatus was also set up around the ill-fated ship to prevent an oil spill from spreading.

Relatives of passengers seeking information about the passengers’ condition filled PCG headquarters.

Eutropia Rasonabe, 87 and her daughter Lilia Serrano, 54, were on their way back to their home province after visiting another of Rasonabe’s daughters in Taguig when the mishap happened.

Despite her age, Rasonabe refused to be transferred to a wheelchair from her bed at the PCG dispensary. She said she would rather walk to a waiting van that would take her to a nearby hotel. "Nothing hurts," she said. "I am just tired."

While she was old enough to have lived through the American occupation and the Japanese invasion of the Philippines during World War II, Rasonabe said the ship fire could well have been her closest brush with death.

In her case, there was no stampede or panic as the other passengers gingerly helped the old lady to a place on a life boat.

Two -month-old Adrian Amumas was separated from his mother, Kathy, 21, by a stampede as the fire broke out. He had been wrapped in a blanket and placed on an inflatable life preserver.

Kathy and the other passengers were almost sure they would die when they decided to let Adrian drift away from them as they swam in the cold waters off Corregidor, the island that served as the last military bastion of the province of Bataan before American forces surrendered to the Imperial Japanese Army during the War in the Pacific.

"I thought I would never see him again," Kathy said as she held her shivering son. Kathy was plucked out of the water by rescuers, while another rescue team saved her son.