Canada ferry sinks, all 101 aboard safe
Published: March 22, 2006
A ferry carrying 101 passengers and crew ran aground and sank in the middle of the night off Canada’s Pacific coast, but all aboard are believed safe, officials said.
The Queen of the North was believed to have struck a rock at about 12:43 a.m. Pacific Time near Gil Island, about 75 miles south of Prince Rupert as it sailed along B.C.’s Inside Passage off the north coast of the province.
All 59 passengers and 42 crew members got into life boats and escaped the sinking ship, said BC Ferries Corp., a provincially-owned company. No serious injuries were reported.
“We were very fortunate in this case. Fate was smiling upon everybody today,” Canadian Forces Major Chuck Grenkow told Canadian Broadcasting Corp.
The passengers were taken to the isolated aboriginal village of Hartley Bay, which had also sent boats to help with the rescue.
Initial reports said 102 people were aboard the ship, capable of holding up to 700 people and 115 cars, which was on a routine journey from Prince Rupert to Port Hardy.
The ferry sank along a popular route for cruise ships that travel the coast from Vancouver and Seattle to Alaska each summer.
A Canadian Coast Guard boat, the Sir Wilfred Laurier, was on patrol in the area and responded to the ferry’s distress call, reaching the scene at about 2:15 a.m., officials said.
B.C. Ferries president David Hahn said the cause of the accident is being investigated, but it was believed that the ferry hit a rock.
“It is impossible for me to conjecture why it ended up where it did,” Hahn told reporters outside the ferry service’s headquarters in Victoria.
Investigators from the Transportation Safety Board of Canada are heading to the scene.
Premier Gordon Campbell defended the province’s ferry fleet, although he acknowledged that the Queen of the North was one of the older vessels being eyed for replacement because it only had a single compartment hull.
“The fleet is safe. Not only is the fleet safe, but it is manned by professional crews that are trained in safety,” Campbell said in a radio station interview.
The ship was built in 1969 and received a major rebuilding in 2001
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