Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Iranian tanker explodes, sinks
Hope fades for 29 sailors missing off China’s coast.
TEHRAN, Iran — An Iranian oil tanker exploded and sank Sunday after it had been burning for more than a week off the coast of China, as an Iranian official acknowledged there was “no hope” of missing sailors surviving the disaster.
The collision and disaster of the Sanchi, which carried 30 Iranians and two Bangladeshis, had transfixed an Iran still reeling from days of protests and unrest that swept the country at the start of the year.
Families of the sailors wept and screamed at the headquarters of the National Iranian Tanker Co. in Tehran, the private company that owns the Sanchi. Some needed to be taken by ambulance to nearby hospitals as they were so overwhelmed by the news.
“Thirty-two people died without a funeral and without coffins! They burned to ashes while their families were wailing here!” cried out one woman who didn’t give her name. The government “has come after 10 days to sympathize with them? What sympathy are you talking about?”
State TV earlier quoted Mahmoud Rastad, the chief of Iran’s maritime agency, as saying: “There is no hope of finding survivors among the [missing] 29 members of the crew.”
President Hassan Rouhani expressed his condolences and called on relevant government agencies to investigate the disaster and take any necessary legal measures, according to state TV. In a message, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei expressed his condolences and sympathy with the victims’ families, his own website, Khamenei.ir, reported Sunday. The government also announced today as a nationwide day of public mourning over the disaster.
The Panamanian-flagged vessel collided with the CF Crystal, a Hong Kong-registered bulk freighter, around 8 p.m. Jan. 6, about 160 nautical miles east of Shanghai. That area of the East China Sea is frequently crossed by ships traveling to China, South Korea, Taiwan and Japan.
The cause of the collision remains unclear.
Members of the salvage team tried to get to the living quarters on the tanker, but they were driven back by temperatures on the burning ship of around 192 degrees, Xinhua said. Before sinking, the ship was at risk of exploding because of the presence of spilled oil as the fire raged, the Ministry of Transportation said.
The U.S. Navy also sent a P-8A Poseidon airplane from Kadena Air Base on Okinawa, Japan. It searched about 3,600 square nautical miles without locating any missing sailors, the Navy said.
Thirteen ships, including one from South Korea and two from Japan, engaged in the rescue and cleanup effort Saturday, spraying foam in an effort to extinguish the fire.
But around noon Sunday, Chinese state media reported that a large explosion shook the Sanchi, its hull and superstructure completely stripped of paint by the flames. The ship then sank.
The Chinese say the ship left a 3.8-square-mile area contaminated with oil. However, the condensate oil the ship was carrying readily evaporates or burns off in a fire, reducing the chance of a major oil spill.
Chinese state media also said the ship’s voice data recorder, which functions like so-called black boxes on aircraft, had been recovered. Three bodies have been recovered from the sea, leaving 29 crew members still unaccounted for.
The Chinese foreign minister, Wang Yi, told his Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif, by phone Saturday that “as long as there is 1 percent of hope, China will continue to make 100 percent effort” in the rescue effort, according to a report on the ministry’s website.
The tanker has operated under five different names since it was built in 2008, according to the U.N.-run International Maritime Organization. The National Iranian Tanker Co. describes itself as operating the largest tanker fleet in the Middle East.
It’s the second collision for a ship from the National Iranian Tanker Co. in less than a year and a half. In August 2016, one of its tankers collided with a Swiss container ship in the Singapore Strait, damaging both ships but causing no injuries or oil spill.