Thai: The Search For Sunk Navy Ship Missing Sailors Continues

Rescuers are combing the Gulf of Thailand on the second day of a search for 29 sailors still missing after a Thai warship sank.

Eko Hot Blog reports that the HTMAS Sukhothai carrying 105 crew sank off the southeast coast on Sunday night after losing power in a storm.

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Search teams have saved 76 people so far, including one man found on Tuesday after two nights in rough seas.

But close to a third of the crew is still missing. The navy has not disclosed if there were any fatalities.

The Thai navy and air force resumed the search on Tuesday with hundreds of officers on four navy ships as well as several helicopters deployed to scan a vast 50-square-kilometre (30 square miles) area.

A Thai naval commander had earlier suggested search crews had only a two-day window to find anyone alive in the ocean.

“Life jacket, life buoy and their floating technique allow us 48 hours to save their life,” Vice Admiral Pichai Lorchusakul said.

“Therefore, [Tuesday] will be the highlight. We will try to do as much as we can to save them,” he added.

Several sailors have already been found, exhausted and some unconscious.

“We found this guy holding a life buoy… he was floating in the water for 10 hours,” Captain Krapich Korawee-Paparwit of the HTMS Kraburi told Reuters.

He added that the man, still conscious, had a minor head wound and “sore eyes as he was exposed to sea water.”

Other sailors were found in a life raft after they jumped from the sinking vessel. Pictures and footage shared by the navy on Twitter show survivors wrapped in blankets and being taken to the hospital.

The HTMS Sukhothai, a 76m-long corvette, had been on day two of a routine patrol east off south-eastern Thailand when it got caught in a storm on Sunday night.

The Thai navy said water flooded its hull and then the electricity room, cutting the power.

Dramatic pictures posted on the navy’s Twitter account shows the vessel listing onto the starboard side, before the vessel went under around 11:30pm Sunday (04:30 GMT).

Other naval ships were immediately alerted and sent to assist, but only the HTMS Kraburi frigate reached the vessel before it sank, about 32km east of Bang Saphan in the Prachuap Khiri Khan province.

The Thai navy said this was the first time it had lost a ship in such circumstances, and it would launch an investigation.

However, naval experts have questioned how such a disaster struck a ship on routine parole.

“It’s really unusual,” said naval law expert David Letts, an associate professor at the Australian National University.

He noted that ships would have watertight doors for different compartments – to prevent flooding affecting central units like the engine room.

The disaster striking at night meant it was also probable many sailors would have been asleep at the time, and the chaotic situation might have upended protocols like releasing life rafts.

It’s not yet known what caused the ship to flood and why sailors were forced to jump into the water.

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The warship had been commissioned in 1987 and built in the United States by a local shipbuilding company, said the US Naval Institute.

Source: BBC

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