Passengers rescued as St Kitts inter-island ferry sinks

Prime Min­is­ter of St Kitts and Nevis, Dr. Ter­rance M. Drew, on Mon­day vis­it­ed the J.N. France Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal to en­sure the safe­ty of all pas­sen­gers tak­en to the med­ical in­sti­tu­tion fol­low­ing an in­ci­dent in the Bas­seterre har­bour.

“I just left the hos­pi­tal where I was up­dat­ed that every­one from the fer­ry, Ap­ple Syder is safe. Thanks to God, the emer­gency re­sponse teams, hos­pi­tal staff, and civil­ians for their tremen­dous res­cue ef­forts,” Dr. Drew said in a state­ment, adding that rel­e­vant up­dates will be made pub­lic.

Videos post­ed on so­cial me­dia showed the in­ter-is­land fer­ry Ap­ple Syder ex­pe­ri­enc­ing dif­fi­cul­ties be­fore sub­merg­ing just min­utes af­ter de­part­ing Bas­seterre for Nevis.

The videos al­so show shows pas­sen­gers wear­ing life jack­ets float­ing in the wa­ter as res­cue teams worked to bring them to safe­ty.

All the 47 pas­sen­gers and crew were res­cued.

In a state­ment post­ed on his Face­book page, For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter, Dr. Den­zil Dou­glas, wrote “with a sigh of re­lief and hearts full of grat­i­tude, we give thanks that every­one is safe.”

“As we re­flect on to­day’s fright­en­ing in­ci­dent, mem­o­ries of the ill-fat­ed MV Chris­te­na in­evitably come to mind. May we nev­er for­get that tragedy, even as we re­main thank­ful that this sit­u­a­tion end­ed with­out the loss of life. We com­mend the swift re­sponse of the Coast Guard, fish­er­men, and all who as­sist­ed in en­sur­ing the safe res­cue of those on board. Tru­ly, every life saved is a bless­ing,” he added.

On Au­gust 1, 1970, the in­ter-is­land fer­ry, MV Chris­te­na, sank in the “Nar­rows” strait. It was de­signed to hold an es­ti­mat­ed 155 pas­sen­gers, but at the time of the in­ci­dent, the ves­sel had more than 300 peo­ple cel­e­brat­ing the Eman­ci­pa­tion hol­i­day, lead­ing to the trag­ic loss of 233 lives. —BAS­SETERRE, ST. KITTS (CMC)