A total of 37 people were
killed and scores injured when a passenger ferry collided near Lamma island
with a vessel carrying company employees on a pleasure cruise to watch holiday
fireworks on Monday evening.
It was the deadliest maritime
accident in the territory since 1971, when 88 people were killed as a Hong
Kong-Macau ferry sank during a typhoon.
The Asian financial centre is
one of the world's busiest ports, with more than 425,000 vessels arriving and
departing in 2010, according to official figures.
On any given day, scores of
cargo ships can be seen moored in clusters around the port, and at night the
horns of passing leviathan container vessels echo towards the city.
But fatal accidents are rare on
Victoria Harbour's crowded waters, despite high-speed hydrofoils vying for
space with red-sailed tourist junks, luxury private yachts and the 100-year-old
Star Ferries that connect Hong Kong to Kowloon.
Researchers say that while it
remains one of the world's safest ports, increased vessel traffic and risks
associated with land reclamation works along the harbour front call for urgent
government attention.
"People will start
querying whether Hong Kong's marine traffic management has been kept up to
pace," Albert Lai, the founding chairman of think-tank The Professional
Commons and a trained civil engineer told AFP.
"It certainly affects Hong
Kong's international reputation as a shipping hub," he added, calling for
a review of marine traffic systems in the former British colony.
Despite the importance of
marine transport to the city's seven million population, passengers said the
ferry crew involved in Monday night's incident appeared to have no training on
how to respond to such an emergency.
"The crew was terrible,
useless. They just stood around as we were putting the life jackets on... The
crew didn't seem to know what was going on," Clare Kirkman, a 43-year-old
Briton who has lived on Lamma for 10 years, told AFP on Tuesday.
"The worst thing is that
they seemed more concerned with getting the life jacket from us when we got to
the pier. It was a good 10 or 15 minutes until we got to the ferry pier but I
didn't see any ambulances or police.
"It was a quiet ferry but
it was concerning the ferry people weren't more helpful. God forbid if it had
been a school ferry."
Residents of Lamma -- a sleepy,
car-free island to the east of Hong Kong which is inundated with thousands of
day trippers on weekends -- expressed anger at the number of ferries put on to
cater for the holiday crowds.
"I have seen ferries
back-to-back but this was just ridiculous. I don't think they should be able to
bring so many people to the island," said Kay Travers, a Lamma resident of
18 years.
Officials said the incident was
still under investigation and have refused to speculate about the cause of the
accident. Six people were arrested, three crew from each vessel, said the
territory's security chief Lai Tung-kwok.
All of the dead and most of the
injured were aboard the party boat which was taking staff and families of power
company Hong Kong Electric on a cruise to watch the fireworks.
The single-hulled vessel with a
capacity of 200 people sank within minutes of the impact, leaving only its blue
bow poking above the choppy waves.
Shipping experts say that given
the intensity of traffic, the rate of fatal incidents in Hong Kong is low.
But Lai pointed out that water
traffic had risen significantly in recent years as soaring accommodation prices
on Hong Kong drove more and more people to live on outlying islands such as
Lamma.
He said the hundreds of
hectares (acres) of land reclaimed along Victoria Harbour over the past decade
made journeys on small boats more perilous, as they were pushed into lanes used
by powerful high-speed ferries.
"The harbour has become
smaller, making the waves generated by ferries crossing the harbour higher and
making the water more choppy," he said.
Asked if the accident damaged
the port's reputation, Hong Kong's chief executive Leung Chun-ying told AFP:
"This is definitely an isolated incident. The marine territory of Hong
Kong is safe."
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