SECTION:news

Passengers on ship angry after rescue

The Associated Press

SINGAPORE -- Balancing on rafts and in lifeboats, hundreds of passengers praying for rescue watched their luxury cruise liner sink in the night and remembered the Titanic. Once rescued, however, their fear turned to anger. Passengers arriving in Singapore on Friday after the 30,000-ton Sun Vista caught fire and sank were tired, dirty and broke. "We have no money, no credit cards, no clothes. This is the only thing we have, our passports," said Raoul Gutierrez of Mexico, who emerged from the plane looking for Sun Cruises representatives. Clad in shorts and cotton shirt, with an orange life jacket still tied at his back, Gutierrez estimated that he lost $30,000 in computers, cameras, clothing and jewelry. But he refused to stop in the transit area and fill out a form detailing his lost belongings. "I can't think of that right now," he said. "I want to go to a hotel and sleep now." All 1,104 passengers and crew aboard the eight-deck Sun Vista, which listed and sank off the coast of Malaysia early Friday, were rescued by navy vessels and ferries. Sixteen passengers were hospitalized in Malaysia for slight injuries. A company statement said passengers would be accommodated at hotels and given full refunds "for the inconvenience." But Gutierrez and his wife, who refused to wait at the airport to board their flight home, said they were offered no help with hotel or transportation arrangements. Relatives and passengers complained that no Sun Cruises representatives were in the arrivals hall to give directions or information. The ship company had buses waiting for passengers who had been scheduled to spend their last holiday night in Singapore. But other passengers said no arrangements had been made to give them a rest in Singapore and they were being pressured to board their flights without fresh clothes or a bath. On Penang island in northwestern Malaysia, where passengers were taken first, some said Sun Cruises promised to get them some cash, but they still had none by mid-afternoon. "I've lost my wallet and I've had no money for a day in a strange country," said John Glover, 55, a carpenter from Coventry, England, who was in the hotel lobby of the five-star Shangri-la in Georgetown, Penang. Sun Cruises officials gave each passenger in Singapore $450 to buy some clothes. But Gutierrez said the sum was too small. "We didn't expect them to all come off smiling," Sun Cruises spokeswoman Judy Choo said of the anger expressed. She said the passengers were asked to fill out the forms because "we need to make arrangements for payments, we have to assess the payments." An investigation was under way as to why the ship sank. Local authorities have requested several crew members remain in Malaysia and assist in their investigation, the Bernama news agency said. Sun Cruises president Aloysius Lee said on Singapore television that the ship's crew had been trying for hours to put out a fire in the main engine room. When the fire couldn't be contained, the passengers were ordered on deck for evacuation Thursday night. Lee said the evacuation was conducted in a "non-panic" mode. But passengers told the Associated Press and other news media that the crew was panicky and the captain agitated. They complained they were given little information and had to spend six to 12 hours on lifeboats in the water because the crew had delayed a call for rescue vessels. Rescued passengers in Penang spoke of panic and chaos, of smoke starting to flow through the air-conditioning vents into the cabins. Others spoke of how they sang the theme song from the 1998 Oscar- winning movie "Titanic." "We were singing the Celine Dion song, "My Heart Will Go On,' trying to keep everyone's spirits up," said Australian passenger Greg Haywood, 30. Indian businessman Ram Yalamanchi, 32, said he would never forget the screams of his fellow passengers. "It was a true nightmare, I thought we all were going to die," Yalamanchi told the Australian Associated Press. "We were on one of the last lifeboats, we watched her just slip under the water." The ship's journey originated in Singapore, stopped to pick up more passengers in the Malaysian city of Malacca and then sailed on to the resort island of Phuket off the southern coast of Thailand. The Sun Vista was on its way back to its base in Singapore. The Titanic collided with an iceberg south of Newfoundland in 1912, and sank on its maiden voyage, killing about 1,500 people.

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