It makes me feel terrible. The remaining crew are here in town while the investigation is ongoing. I just got paid today, so I am going to take some of my grocery money and buy some socks and clothing to donate to the crew, and some phone cards so that they can call home. A bunch of other people in the community are getting together such items to give to the crew. The freighter was sailing under a Malaysian flag, but most of the crew was Filipino and Indian. I think that there were 26 crew, and as the news reports have mentioned, six are unaccounted for.
The captain and a Coast Guard rescue swimmer were on the fuck*ng freighter when it snapped in two. I cannot believe that they made it. When the rescue chopper crashed, local police and EMTs rushed to the scene. On the police scanner, we at the local broadcasting station heard that the ship had broken in half. We relayed the information to the AP and other news organizations.
The city has set up a makeshift morgue for when their bodies wash up...it just grieves me terribly to think about all this. As I said, they didn't have any fuck*ng survival suits, only lifejackets. A lifejacket is designed to support maybe 40% of your weight. There is a three-hour window that you have to rescue survivors out of the Bering Sea. After that, the lifejacket and the person's body sink. Only after decomposition sets in does the person's body float back up to the surface. I am so angry that the ship did not provide survival suits for its crew. That is just wrong.
Okay, all this death and environmental degradation is weighing heavily on my mind. On a lighter note...hee! <3 CJ, "cleaved in twain" was the phrase that first popped into my head when I was in the Elbonia local broadcasting station and news reports were flowing in on Wednesday night. I have no idea where it came from, but I must have read it somewhere. Is it from a famous poem?
wombat and everyone...that is my Somebody nice in the Aleutians update. Thank you for thinking about me! Every time I see your nickname, I always think of Lore Sjoberg Fitzgerald's review of the word "wombat": It is awesome because it has a "wom", a "bat", and an "omba"! <3
Author
Topic: Selendang Ayu: Freighter ran aground in the Aleutians (Read 3561 times)