The Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) has ended its search and retrieval operations without recovering any of the 14 persons aboard the fishing vessel F/V Liberty 5, which sank in the waters of Occidental Mindoro following a collision with a Hong Kong-registered carrier vessel more than a week ago.
An islander plane scoured the waters within and near where the Metro Manila-bound fishing vessel with 12 crewmen and two passengers went down on June 27 for the last time on Tuesday before the PCG decided to terminate the operations, according to its spokesman Commodore Armand Balilo.
“The Coast Guard Aviation Force [CGAF] is prepping to conduct another aerial surveillance in the vicinity waters off Mamburao, Occidental Mindoro today, or the last day of full search and retrieval operations, to aid the 14 missing fishermen/passengers of FV Liberty 5,” Balilo said in a message before the plane made its sortie.
“Starting tomorrow, large ships and aerial assets will be pulled out, but our SAR [search and rescue] teams will continue in actively monitoring the incident area,” he added.
On Monday, the PCG filed charges before the prosecutor’s office in Mindoro against the owner and four officers—all Chinese—of the MV Vienna Wood, the vessel involved in the collision with the fishing vessel on June 27 in the waters of Tayaman, Mamburao, Occidental Mindoro.
The Liberty 5, which is from Palawan, was on its way to Navotas from a fishing activity in Tawi-Tawi when it figured in the collision with the Vienna Wood, which came from Subic and was on its way to Australia.
“Taking into consideration the eye-witness accounts of fishermen who were within the area on the time of the collision, fishing vessels who were first to respond, admission of the collision from the Captain of the MV Vienna Wood, the nature and extent of the damages to both vessels, as well as evidence gathered from the PCG Monitoring Posts in Mamburao, Occidental Mindoro and the PCG Southern Luzon District in Batangas City where the MV Vienna Wood is currently detained by port authorities, led the Coast Guard Station—Mamburao and the Coast Guard Legal Service to believe that there is a finding of criminal negligence on the part of the MV Vienna Wood in relation to the collision, sufficient to file a case against it,” the PCG said in filing the charges.
Named as respondents were Vienna Wood’s owner Nomikos Transworld Maritime and seven of the vessel’s officers identified as Zhang Wei Wei (Master), Shi Bin, Yi Lei, Yang Xifeng, Fan Qoujin, Xia Zhen and Wang Xingtu.
In Zamboanga City, a small plane bearing four people, three of them foreigners, made an emergency landing on the coastline of Sinunuc Boulevard in Barangay Sinunuc on Tuesday after it developed engine trouble.
A report from the Zamboanga City Police sent to Camp Crame said the white training plane—a Piper Seneca with registry number RPC834—went down at around past 9 a.m. shortly after it lifted from the ground, although none of its four occupants were killed.
The four were identified as Nepalese Suramya Khanal, 28, student pilot; Jyothis John Pulinthanam, Indian, 27, captain; Jemy Chacko Domen, Indian, 34, instructor and passenger; and Razel Dulay, 27 mechanic. All of them are residing in Dumaguete City.
“Investigation disclosed that as soon as takeoff one of the engines had an engine failure forcing them to ditch into the sea to prevent further harm to the passengers,” the report said, adding no one was hurt during the incident.
The PCG also responded to the crash and reported that when its teams arrived, the “private plane” was already on the water, approximately 6 feet depth and 6 meters away from the shoreline of Barangay Sinunuc.
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