Rescue crews pumped oxygen into the hull of a sunken Korean ferry Thursday in a desperate bid to buy time in their long-shot search for survivors.
Twenty-four hours after the 6,800-ton ferry Sewol sank off South Korea’s southwest coast, divers held out hope that there were enough air pockets in the ship to keep missing passengers alive.
At least nine people have been confirmed dead.
Another 179 have been rescued.
But no one knows whether the missing 287 — most of them students on a class trip — are alive, perhaps on the ship, or if they died in the water, which is about 50 degrees.
Richard Burke, chairman of the engineering department at SUNY Maritime College in the Bronx, said it’s remotely possible there are survivors in the stricken ferry.
“It’s possible but not likely,” he told The Post, adding that people have lived in sunken ships for days but only in rare cases.
“There is historical precedent. After the Pearl Harbor attack, they salvaged the ships and discovered that some of the crew had lived for many days after the attack. They eventually died because they ran out of food or water. But the likelihood is pretty slim.”
But Burke, who is also executive director of the college’s Global Maritime Center, also pumping oxygen into the vessel would not appreciably increase chances of survival.
“It might help but only a little. When you die of asphyxia, you don’t die from a lack of oxygen, you die from an excess of carbon dioxide,” he said, explaining that the carbon dioxide would have to somehow be vented from the hold.
David Jardine-Smith, secretary of the International Maritime Rescue Federation, agreed that it’s unlikely that many passengers could have survived.
“The chances of finding people in there [alive] are not zero,” he said. “It is not impossible that people have survived, but, tragically, it’s very unlikely.”
Such forecasts are not likely to sit well with anxious relatives, most of whom are already angry over the chaos that ensued in the moments after the boat began to list Wednesday morning.
Officials said an evacuation order was not given for at least 30 minute, and an early announcement told passengers to stay put.
Meanwhile, South Korean media outlets said 46 lifeboats were still attached to the ferry, further fueling their rage.
Video showed at least 12 of the white survival capsules – which hold the lifeboats – still attached to the ferry, even as it was keeled over in the water, CNN reported.
Another report said the ferry’s captain may have been among the first to flee.
The captain broke down in tears when asked if he had anything to say to the missing passengers’ families.
“I am sorry, I am at a loss for words,” captain Lee Joon Suk said, his head and face covered, according to CNN.
Lee faces possible charges of negligence and accidental homicide.
No one knows why the vessel sank, but some experts speculated that the five-story ferry might have veered off course in dense fog.
But the South Korean Oceans and Fisheries Ministry said it had approved the ferry’s route, and “there was no huge difference between their plan and the actual track chart,” spokesman Nam Jae Heon said.
A crew member said Thursday that an immediate evacuation order was not issued – even though scores of people were trapped inside – because officers on the bridge were trying to stabilize the vessel after it started to list amid confusion and chaos.
The first instructions from the captain were for the passengers to put on life jackets and stay put, and it was not until about 30 minutes later that he ordered an evacuation, Oh Yong-seok, a 58-year-old crew member, told The Associated Press.
But Oh said he wasn’t sure if the captain’s order, given to crew members, was actually relayed to passengers on the public address system.
Several survivors also said that they never heard any evacuation order.
Oh, a helmsmen on the ferry with 10 years’ shipping experience, said that when the crew gathered on the bridge and sent a distress call the ship was already listing more than 5 degrees, the critical angle at which the ship can be brought back to even keel.
At about that time, a third mate reported that the ship could not be righted, and the captain ordered another attempt, which also failed, Oh said.
A crew member then tried to reach a lifeboat but tripped, prompting the first mate to suggest to the captain that everyone should evacuate, Oh said.
The captain agreed and ordered an evacuation, but Oh said that amid the confusion and chaos on the bridge he does not recall the message being conveyed on the public address system.
By then it was impossible for crew members to move to passengers’ rooms to help them because the ship was tilted at an impossibly acute angle. The delay in evacuation also likely prevented the lifeboats being deployed.
“We couldn’t even move one step. The slope was too big,” said Oh, who escaped with about a dozen others, including the captain.
Passenger Koo Bon-hee, 36, said that many people were trapped inside by windows that were too hard to break. He wanted to escape earlier but an announcement said passengers should stay put.
“The rescue wasn’t done well. We were wearing life jackets. We had time,” Koo, who was on a business trip to Jeju with a co-worker, said from a hospital bed in Mokpo where he was treated for minor injuries. “If people had jumped into the water … they could have been rescued. But we were told not to go out.”
There were 475 people aboard, including 325 students from Danwon High School in Ansan, on an overnight school trip to Jeju, a tourist island.
Worried and angry parents of the students gathered at the high school, which is near Seoul, while other relatives assembled on Jindo, an island near where the ferry slipped beneath the surface, leaving only the blue-tipped, forward edge of the keel visible.
In Mokpo, a city close to the accident site, relatives of the dead students wailed and sobbed as ambulances drove away with the bodies, headed to Ansan.
The families, who spent a mostly sleepless night at the Mokpo hospital, followed the ambulances in their cars. On Jindo Island, also near the accident site, one woman passed out and was carried to an ambulance.
The family of one of the dead, 24-year-old teacher Choi Hye-jung, spoke about a young woman who loved to boast of how her students would come to her office and give her hugs.
“She was very active and wanted to be a good leader,” her father, Choi Jae-kyu, 53, said at Mokpo Jung-Ang Hospital while waiting for the arrival of his daughter’s body. Choi’s mother, sitting on a bench at the hospital, sobbed quietly with her head bent down on her knee.
The rescue has included 169 boats, 29 planes and 512 divers, and workers were also trying to maneuver a crane in place to help stabilize the ferry.
Driving rain, strong winds and thick fog hampered rescue efforts Thursday, and three of the 22 volunteer divers who joined the search went missing in high tide but were later found, YTN said.
President Geun-hye visited families at the scene and urged rescue workers to step up their efforts.
“Since there is the possibility of survivors, we cannot waste any time,” she said.
