updated news

MANILA, Philippines - A group of 28 ferry passengers and crew washed ashore after drifting at sea for more than a day from the site where a typhoon capsized their ship and left most of the hundreds aboard missing and presumed dead, officials said today.

Manila's DZBB radio said the survivors, 20 male passengers, four women and four crewmen, drifted at sea for more than 24 hours wearing their life jackets, reaching Mulanay township in eastern Quezon province late yesterday. The head of the coast guard, Vice Adm. Wilfredo Tamayo, announced early today that they had been found, raising the total number of survivors to 38. All were discovered after making it to land.

Tamayo said rescuers might have to bore a hole in the capsized ferry to allow divers access to areas where many aboard the Princess of the Stars were believed to have been trapped.

Coast guard frogmen who managed to get to the stricken ship got no response when they rapped on the hull with metal instruments, then had to give up late yesterday because of the strong waves. The ship carried more than 740 passengers and crew.

Rescuers hoped to get inside with U.S. assistance requested by the Philippine Red Cross. Typhoon Fengshen has killed at least 163 people across the sprawling archipelago, setting off landslides and floods, and knocking out electricity.

Six bodies, including those of a man and woman who had bound themselves together, have washed ashore, along with children's slippers and life jackets.

About two dozen relatives went to the Manila office of the ferry's owner, Sulpicio Lines. Some wept as they waited for news.

"I'm very worried. I need to know what happened to my family," said Felino Farionin, his voice cracking. His wife, son and four in-laws were on the ferry, which was going from Manila to Cebu.

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo talked to officials in a teleconference aired live on nationwide radio yesterday, scolding coast guard officials for allowing the ferry to leave Manila late Friday despite the bad weather.

Reynato Lanoria, a janitor on the ship, estimated that about 100 people could have survived, "but the others were trapped inside."

"I think they are all dead by now," he told DZMM radio.

Lanoria said he was on the top deck when a crew member ordered people to put on life vests about 11:30 a.m. Saturday. About 30 minutes later, the ship began listing so rapidly that elderly people and children fell on the wet deck.

Jesus Gica, a passenger, worried that many people were trapped below when the ship listed.

"There were many of us who jumped overboard, but we were separated because of the big waves," he said. "The others were also able to board the life rafts, but it was useless because the strong winds flipped them over."

The ferry initially ran aground a few miles off central Sibuyan island Saturday, then capsized, said Mayor Nanette Tansingco of Sibuyan's San Fernando. With the upturned ferry visible from her town, she appealed for food, medicine and embalming fluid.

The nearly 24,000-ton ferry - with 626 passengers and 121 crew members on board - was "dead in the water" after its engine failed about noon Saturday, Tamayo said.

Pope Benedict XVI said yesterday that he was praying for the victims of the ferry disaster, particularly the large number of children aboard. The Philippines is predominantly Roman Catholic.

The typhoon-prone Philippines was the site of the world's worst peacetime maritime disaster when the ferry MV Dona Paz sank in 1987, killing more than 4,341 people.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/world/bal-te.philippines23jun23,0,5043085.story