The week before last the Ukrainian Memory of Mercury shipwrecked in the Black Sea. For the last time the vessel was in communication at 5:30 p.m. on January 26. Neither boats nor the coast services received an SOS, which is why the catastrophe has become known with big delay. The Ministry of Emergency Management announced that the vessel had 51 persons on board — 25 crew members, 5 employees of the tourist company including the owner of the vessel, and 21 passengers.
While approaching the Crimea (in the northwestern Black Sea) the vessel is said to have received a strong pull to one side due to a shift of cargo fixed on the upper deck. No attempts to balance it out helped. Within several minutes the boat overturned and sank. 24 crew members and passengers discovered after two and a half days by the Heroes of Sevastopol cargo carrier managed to survive on one of the rubber inflatable rafts that equip every boat and are intended to carry ten. Later the shipwrecked discovered another identical raft floating in the sea. In order to reach it one of the crew members had to swim in the cold water from the raft overloaded beyond any limits. After the rafts were tied to each other, half the survivors left for the empty raft. One of the survivors from the Memory of Mercury later died, presumably from hypothermia. Only 23 people managed to board of the Heroes of Sevastopol. Their state, as a crew member of the freighter later said, was very bad. The people had spent almost two and a half days in the cold water that was filling the rafts. It was impossible to move in the tiny rafts, there was practically no food, and water supply appeared to be not fit to drink. As a result, all the survivors were in a state of shock, and during the first hours after the rescue they were practically unable to speak.
At 7:30 on Monday the Hero of Sevastopol arrived at the commercial seaport of the city whose name it bore, and the shipwrecked were delivered to the first city hospital. Their state at the present moment is evaluated as satisfactory.
The Viktor Lebedev arrived at Sevastopol port about 11 p.m. the Monday before last. It brought the captain of the wrecked Memory of Mercury Leonid Ponomarenko and six passengers along with eight bodies. The Omega that picked up three more passengers from the sunken Memory of Mercury at sea arrived at Yalta at 4:00 a.m. that Tuesday. Relatives met them and took them home. The Omega also delivered six bodies picked up from the capsized boat. One more inflatable raft that had carried five people according to preliminary information has not been found.
Press Service Director of the Crimean Prosecutor’s Office Anatoly Tytarchuk told The Daythat a criminal case has been opened on the death of the passengers. Prosecutor of the Crimea Oleksandr Dobrorez, his deputy Volodymyr Rebrov, and the operative investigation group created specially to investigate this case went to the site. All the necessary documents have been collected from the Sata Company and the port of registration. Captain Leonid Ponomarenko is under arrest. According to UNIAN this took place after the representatives of law enforcement bodies went onboard the Viktor Lebedev that had picked up the captain and five others. The criminal case against Capt. Ponomarenko is under Article 77 part 5 of the Criminal Code (violation of safety regulations in the traffic and exploitation of transport is punished by three to five years in prison). In the course of investigation the Prosecutor’s Office promised to keep the public informed. The Prosecutor’s Office confirms that overloading and incorrect fixing of the cargo ondeck are the preliminary reasons for the tragedy, but the circumstances of the tragedy are still being investigated
The Memory of Mercury belonged to Simferopol’s Sata Tourist Agency, a small company. It was freighted for its unlucky trip by their colleagues from Alan-Tour (local sailors call it Alania), the group of tourists was a joint one.
Member of the Sata work group Liubov Piven told The Daythat the staff is taking the tragedy to heart; those close to them have died, including company employees and crew members. They all knew each other very well, often went together on trips to Istanbul and were dear to one another, connected not only by business ties b u t by personal friendship. As to the passengers, there were not many people from the Crimea among them; most were from other regions of Ukraine.
Meanwhile, the tragedy will undoubtedly bring forth a review of the conduct of tourism in the Crimea and in the Black Sea in general, as well as the practice of shuttle trips, a specific kind of tourism begot by the special conditions of the former Soviet Union. The conditions and practice of insurance will be verified as will the seaworthiness of vessels and reliability of other means of transport along with the level of responsibility of both tourist and transportation companies.
The tragedy has made this issue extremely relevant: it is no secret that shuttle trips are being conducted not only by sea but also by bus, train, and air.
