Three die, 22 missing after new Philippine ferry disaster

MANILA: At least three people died while 22 others were missing after a small inter-island ferry sank in waters south of the Philippine capital, the coast guard said Sunday, the second sea disaster in three days.

The MV Baleno-9, carrying 88 passengers and crew, began listing and went down just before midnight near Batangas City, the coast guard said.

Ships in the area rescued 63 passengers but three bodies were later recovered by the coast guard and 22 are still unaccounted for, coast guard chief Admiral Wilfredo Tamayo said.

Passengers told the coast guard that the roll-on ferry began taking on water from the bow ramp.

This "severely affected the stability of the vessel causing her to badly list and eventually sink," the coast guard report said.

Search vessels and aircraft have been dispatched to locate any more survivors in the area where the ferry went down.

"Hopefully, their flights will not be fruitless and they may find a few more of the missing," said coast guard spokesman Commander Armand Balilo.

He noted that the ferry had sufficient life vests and life rafts and that this may have allowed more of those on board to escape alive.

Tamayo said they could not give an exact reason why the ship apparently began to take on water, before eventually sinking.

"It did not hit anything. Our first finding is it ran into huge waves. This would have put pressure on the (bow) ramp but we still have to get more details. We are getting accounts from the survivors," he told local radio.

Coast guard officials said the captain of the sunken ferry had been rescued and that maritime investigators had interviewed him, but no details had been released.

Sunday's disaster comes barely three days after a wooden passenger boat Catalyn B was hit by a fishing vessel and sank near Manila on Thursday, leaving four dead and 23 missing.

Calmer Philippine volcano a threat

LEGASPI: The Philippines' Mayon volcano may be showing less visible signs of unrest but this could be a deceptive calm before a deadly eruption, the chief government volcanologist said on Sunday.

"Do not become complacent. The people only see what is coming out of the crater and that is often cloud covered. It is not just the observed phenomenon that matters. We also look at the quakes, the gas emitted and the swelling of the volcano," said chief volcanologist Renato Solidum.

"We are telling the people, 'do not just count the number of quakes or what you see from the crater.' It may look calm but it is not calm. It can still explode," he warned in a radio broadcast.

"You might think it is taking a break but the volcano is still swelling," he said after the restive volcano emitted fewer ash emissions on Sunday than in previous days.

He said that while the amount of lava trickling out of the volcano had fallen, the magma inside Mayon was still rising, possibly indicating that the volcano was clogged.

Mayon, the Philippines' most active volcano, located about 330 kilometres (200 miles) southeast of Manila, increased its activity earlier this month, prompting the government to put it under alert level four -- meaning that an explosive eruption could happen any day now.

Residents living in an eight-kilometre danger zone around Mayon have been evacuated despite some refusing to leave their farms.

More than 47,500 people have been taken to 29 evacuation centres to protect them from a possible eruption although some people are known to defy army security, sneaking out to periodically return home for supplies.

"Soldiers are continuously intensifying checkpoint operations and security patrols within the danger zones," said army spokesman Captain Razaleigh Bansawan.

Solidum warned that the volcano could stay active for as long as two months, similar to its last eruption in 2006 when it simmered for months, dumping tonnes of ash on its slopes.

No one was killed by the eruption itself but in December of that year a passing typhoon dislodged the ash from Mayon's slopes, turning it into a fast-moving mudflow that covered villages and killed about a thousand people.

The 2,460-metre (8,070-foot) volcano, which is famed for its near-perfect cone, has erupted 48 times in recorded history. In 1814, more than 1,200 people were killed as lava buried the town of Cagsawa.