Let Us Hope It deosn't SINK! "Superferry To Be Used for Haitian EQ Relief"

Superferry To Be Used for Haitian EQ Relief

I find this facinating, since all of the ports of Haiti are completely destroyed, and it is going on one week since the disaster, and there is no way that the SF could have been used for immediate releif, becasue there are no workable ports at this time at PoP. Now, if the SF is being used this way, good for it. However, it does not mean that what happened to the SF in Hawaii was a bad thing. The ship belongs in military use, obviously. However, what do SF proponents have to say about other SF which sank with passengers aboard earlier this year? Im just sayin, people.

SuperFerry sinks off Zambo Norte coast

Disaster cause still not clear

Associated Press, Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 01:25:00 09/07/2009

Filed Under: Maritime Accidents, Waterway & Maritime Transport

MANILA, Philippines—The text messages to relatives came early Sunday from passengers aboard the SuperFerry 9 midway on a voyage from General Santos City to Iloilo City that the vessel carrying more than 900 people was listing to its starboard side.

Rosalie Solarte, 40, said she called her husband Alberto, 52, at around 5:30 a.m.

“He said he was about to jump from the ship,” said Solarte, one of about 20 people who had rushed to the Iloilo port to ask about the fate of their relatives aboard the ill-fated vessel.

“I told him to wait and observe first what is happening. I can’t contact him now,” the Guimaras resident told the Inquirer.

As dawn broke in waters off the Zamboanga peninsula on a clear day, the SuperFerry 9 had capsized, according to officials, leaving at least twelve people dead in the panic and scramble for the exits.

Coast Guard chief Adm. Wilfredo Tamayo said that as of 9 p.m. Sunday night, 926 survivors had been rescued—some of them on life rafts—by two commercial ships and several Philippine Navy vessels and taken to Zamboanga City.

A search was under way for more than 30 people who remained missing, Tamayo said, adding that they may have drifted with their life jackets or have been rescued but were not yet listed as survivors.

“We really hope they’re just unaccounted for due to the confusion,” Tamayo said.

Navy ships were deployed and Air Force helicopters scoured the seas, Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro said.

The US military station in Zamboanga City conducting antiterrorist training dispatched a support vessel with a medical team to help in the search.

Survivor Raffy Borro said it was his first time to see babies and children thrown out to the water as their mothers cried.

"Parang Titanic Filipino-style. Para kaming nasa pelikula pero totoo talaga (It was like Titanic Filipino-style. It was like being in a movie scene but this was all real)," Borro told the Inquirer.

He reported a shortage in life jackets and life rafts.

"Agawan. Maginaw. Madilim. Kaya natakot lahat tumalon sa dagat. Noong mabilis ang pagtagilid, ang daming tumakbo at nag-panic, maraming natakot. Ang mga bata nag-iiyakan, mga magulang iyakan hingi ng tulong (People were grappling for life jackets. It was cold. Dark. That’s why people were so scared, they just jumped into the sea. When we felt the ship listing fast, many ran and panicked. The kids were crying and the parents were wailing for help)," Borro recalled.

Passenger Chelona Pabit of Trento town in Agusan province said she saw babies and children being thrown out of the boat. "It was like you were leaving it all up to fate on who will survive," Pabit said.

Before leaving the General Santos City port Saturday morning, Pabit said, she heard a loud bang below the boat.

"Then the boat started to tilt. We were travelling on a tilted boat," Pabit said.

Pabit said she even asked a ship crew why the boat was tilted, and all the response was: "strong wind and waves."

Romeo Billano, 62, had the same observation.

"It was like a container van slammed on the wall below," Billano said.

"There were no big waves. The weather was fine," he added.

All Billano had with him as he jumped off the boat was a piece of paper where the mobile phone number of his daughter was written.

Roderick Teves, a driver and one of the survivors, told Bombo Radyo-GenSan in a mobile phone interview that 19 crew members of Tanging Pamilya were aboard the ill-fated ferry.

But Teves said only nine of them were rescued.

"I don't know whether my 10 other colleagues were rescued by other vessels who helped in the rescue efforts," he said in Tagalog.

Teves identified eight co-workers who were saved with him as Joe Carlo Aquino, Joseph Noble, Raniel Billones, Manuel Malixi, Victor Gevilo, Mike Lungos, John Michael Roselo and Gaspar Capalar Jr.

Teves, a resident of Libis, Quezon City, claimed that their equipment and two service trucks sank with the vessel.

He revealed that around 2 a.m., the passenger ship tilted to the right, when container vans apparently slid to the right.

"I guess the ship lost its balance. We were on the vessel waiting for the rescue. Other passengers who panicked grabbed life jackets and jumped off the ship," he said.

Cause of sinking unclear

The cause of the listing was not clear.

The ferry skipper, Joel Yap, initially ordered everyone on board to abandon the ship as a precautionary step, said Jess Supan, vice president of Aboitiz Transport System, which owns the steel-hulled ferry built in Japan in 1986.

Supan said the vessel carried 847 passengers, a crew of 117 and four sea marshals.

Supan ruled out a terrorist attack as the cause of the disaster, similar to the February 2004 assault carried out by the Abu Sayyaf bandit group on SuperFerry 14 that killed 116 people aboard.

But survivor Jude Borro, a resident of General Santos, belied the claim of Supan that the vessel captain gave instructions to passengers to abandon ship.

"There was no instruction from the captain. The ship's crew were even the first to jump off the vessel. The passengers helped each other," Borro said during the same interview.

Borro said the SuperFerry 9 was apparently overloaded.

Borro claimed that about two hours after cruising past Zamboanga City, he heard a thunderous noise from under the vessel where the container vans where loaded.

There were reports that the ferry listed to the right due to a hole in the hull, the National Disaster Coordinating Council said.

Potential oil spill

The 7,000-ton vessel was carrying 220 tons of fuel oil, Supan said, adding that the salvage ship Harbour had been sent to the area to contain any possible oil spill.

He said the Coast Guard had also called a team from Palawan with oil booms and oil dispersants.

Passenger Roger Cinciron told dzMM radio by cell phone that he felt the ferry was tilting around midnight, but he was assured by a crewman that everything was well.

About two hours later, he was roused from sleep by the sound of crashing cargo below his cabin, he said.

“People began to panic because the ship was really tilting,” he said as he waited for rescuers to save him and a group of more than 20 other passengers.

The ferry, which left General Santos City at 8:45 a.m. on Saturday and was scheduled to arrive in Iloilo at 2 p.m. Sunday, ran into problems midway and began to list about 15 kilometers from the nearest shore, Tamayo said.

Fair weather

The weather was generally fair in the vicinity of the Zamboanga peninsula, although a tropical storm was battering the country’s north, the Coast Guard said.

SuperFerry 9 “encountered an undefined problem 17.5 nautical miles off Sibuco Port, Zamboanga del Norte, at 3:35 a.m.,” the maritime police said.

The ship captain then instructed passengers and crew to abandon the sinking vessel, which at the time continued to list to its starboard side.

In its 8:30 a.m. update Sunday, the Philippine Navy said the vessel had already capsized with “bottom hull sighted” some 5.2 nautical miles southwest of Tulalu Point, Sibuco Bay.

Previous accidents

Last year, the MV Princess of the Stars overturned after sailing toward a powerful typhoon off Romblon, killing more than 800 people on board.

In December 1987, the MV Doña Paz sank after colliding with a fuel tanker in the Philippines, killing more than 4,341 people in the world’s worst peacetime maritime disaster.

Among those in the Iloilo port waiting for word of survivors was Elvira Casumlon, 71, of Badiangan town in Iloilo province. Her son, Pepito Jr., 31, was aboard the vessel, traveling with his wife Lita, 36, 7-year-old son Christopher and neighbor Sueden Bolero.

‘I pray that they’re safe’

“I last heard from them Saturday morning when the ship left. I kept on calling them but I failed to contact them,” Elvira said.

Teresita Monijaque from Leganes town in Iloilo has been sending text messages and dialing her cell phone in the hope of reaching her 29-year-old son Jobert and 3-year-old granddaughter Name.

“He sent a text message around 3:15 a.m. that the boat was sinking. I pray that they’re safe,” she said.

Others who arrived early at the shipping port to fetch their kin were shocked to hear that the ship sank.

“I only knew what happened when I got here,” said Giovanni Projio, who came from Sigma town in Capiz province to meet his father-in-law.

Frantic calls from relatives swamped radio stations who covered the rescue operations. Others waited at the radio stations which were trying to call passengers. With reports from Tarra Quismundo, Riza T. Olchondra, Amy Remo, Marlon Ramos, Kristine L. Alave and Nikko Dizon in Manila; Nestor P. Burgos Jr., Inquirer Visayas; Julie Alipala and Aquiles Zonio, Inquirer Mindanao, and Associated Press

My Most Famous Letter

This was a letter that I wrote during the most critical point of the Superferry issue. It was written a few days after attending a family funeral, that of the Matriarch Auntie Kopeka Chandler. All of my heart was poured out in this letter with so much going on here at that time. I found it humbling and flattering that this letter was seen far and wide all over the internet, and I thank the sites that felt it was worth posting.

"These are indeed strange times in our state. I have never seen so many protests for so many things in the entire course of the brief history of this sacred land as a United States State. I for one am part of the make up of this state, but more so than that i believe that on behalf of my native Hawaiian kanaka maoli born and raised on Kaua'i keiki, i not only have an obligation but a right to speak out, to walk my walk and talk my talk, to move, imua walk fore ward and let my voice be heard loud and clear on what is happening on my island of Kaua'i.

It is a symptom of what is happening worldwide, and is now hitting our tender and fragile shores. The most harm it is doing to our true Kaua'i people, and that is fifth generation haoles, chinese, japanese, fourth, and third generation portuguese, spanish and puerto rican, and third and second generation filipinos, and others, not to mention 20th generation kanakas, or the maka ainana, the eyes of the land is that we are all suffering greatly. Not just physically but emotionally too. Our lives have been cruelly huli'd by those with nothing but corporate greed, and the pursuit of money to the detriment of all those others on whose backs they stand.

I'm not perfect, and i have made tons of mistakes in my life, and continue to make them, and probably will go on continuing to make them until the day i lay down for the last time. However, there are mistakes, and then there are outright abominations. Worldwide, people are feeling the pinch and bite of more than just issues like the super-ferry and overdevelopment. Kauai is suffering from a surge of people who do not care about Kauai, its values or its heritage. They do not care about our mana, our aina, our laau, our uluwehiwehi, our ia, our manu or our kinos. All they want is everything we have, and then some. They claim it is theirs we must bow down and give it to them and how dare we resist. How dare we rise up at the totality of what has been done to a peace-loving kauai.

A little history lesson, Kauai managed to get around the wars taking place all over the islands for almost 500 years, until Kamehameha. Kamehameha bowed to the expert and fine diplomacy of our beloved Kaumualii, a humble and great ruler who was not much prone to war, and his son even less so, and ironically he died in battle. His wife remarried, and co-founded a church and had another son, on the grounds of what has become to be known as Coco palms. Queen Deborah Kapule ran the first guest house on Kauai on the shores of the Wailua river, was a staunch christian, and a generous and kind ruler. A trait our current Governor would do well to attempt to emulate, as a women leader. His mother however was a completely different story. She chanted a powerful chant, passed down from great alii wahine mo'i over and over. This chant was so powerful no one dared step foot on Kaua'i. But she , (Kaua'i, for all islands in the Hawaiian beleif concept have genders. Guess which one O'ahu is? Male. Figures.), was coveted and drooled over from a distance especially by those of O'ahu, but they could never completely conquer true Kaua'i.. They always wanted to, and tried several times by using boats, several of which sank. The belief was that Kauai's force of nature has its own agenda, and no one can travel her waters without bowing to her superior force. Nature.

I recently went to two funerals in the span of two weeks both of which hit me very hard. These are the true Kauai families Let me just say that Kauai people, the true old Kaua'i lines speak in a soft melodic tone. They do not bark loudly like angry little lapdogs. They were kind and generous but tough and strong. They could be heard not by loud noise and shouting, but by quiet strength and determination. There has always been a limit to aloha on Kauai. Once you pass it there is no going back. Kauai people, the true old lines of genealogy demand respect because they are the oldest lines in Hawaii, and to many of us, they are the ruling alii class at this time. There are no more survivors of the Kamehameha lines, and it is generally concluded, that here on Kauai, with the Kawananakoa lines lie the true aliis of this generation, the ruling class. True aliis do not subjugate their people, they never could or under the system, they could be immediately deposed. You have to take care of the Makaainana, or you as an alii would not be fed. The aliis had a responsibility to care and protect the aina and ensure that the ahupuaas were safe from invasion, and that proper prayers were said and protocol done so that there would be adequate food supplies to feed the people. This also included proper logistics to make sure that kapus were in place in order to ensure that each type of food source and materials resources had the opportunity to properly propagate themselves. There was a system of justice, and familial hierarchies on Kauai that predates the imposed Kapus of the Tahitians by many generations. The meles, chants and moolelos held a highly intricate and intelligent language full of rich meanings, and interconnecting the entire polynesian, micronesian and melanesian triangle. This is the true people of Kauais heritage. A heritage that cannot be taken away from us.

You cannot rip out our hearts, although you may be able to dampen our spirits, but then a little rain could never stop Kauai, it just makes us stronger. But Kauai people are resilient, and have an innate sense of what is right, and good and pure, and we pursue that to the fullest. O'ahu people generally have a much different attitude, and always have. They are a little louder, a little brasher. a little more conservative, and this can be heard clearly in the difference in cadence when olelo Hawaii is spoken by an O'ahuan, it is hard and guttural, like the German language, although no less beautiful or rich in intelligence and meaning. It is very easy to tell someone from O'ahu from someone from Kaua'i. O'ahu people are always amazed that Kaua'i people can guess they are not from here even if they are "local". Yep, Kauai people are smart that way. Many many O'ahu kanakas have intermarried and joined with Kauais geneological lines, to mix up the geneologies, particularly from Kamehamehas infamous counselors of 13.

But the fact remains, that Kauai blood, the koko that surges through anyones veins that has soaked Kauai into their pores no matter what your race creed or nationality will never stand by and let kauai fall. We are warriors and proud of it. Weather it is with the pen which is mightier that the sword, the waa nui, the speaking out, the holoholo imua, the walking forward with pride, dignity and honor, holding our heads high and knowing that what we believe in the deep core of what is Kauai, which cannot be explained, but only truly felt will never ever fall. It will live forever. Our hearts will not be torn and ripped asunder by those whose only goal is greed, superiority and defilement. We stand po'ohiwi to po'ohiwi with each other, unmoveable, strong, nui ha'aheo. We do it for our children, the aina, and in a larger sense our own sanity as an island people. The respect due Kauai is absolutely undisputed. We will not be disrespected. We will maintain our island. period. this is not a call to battle by the way, but a call out to the heart. Remember who you are. Remember how you were raised. Remember what your kupuna suffered for you on this island to get you top where you are now, regardless of your ancestors race, this is not about race, but a heritage of a great blood mixed in with many others who have become the people of Kauai.

This is a call to fight for an ideal, a philosophy, a beleif, not a call to violence or conduct that will get anyone hurt. This letter is to appeal to your souls, your deepest tears of joy, of hurt, of pain, of relief, of remembrance of contentment and love, and remember why you live kauai. Remember, in practicing these ideas of nui waa, of writing, of walking forward, of fine tuning your minds, of negoitating, of learning, understanding, with these tools we are warriors that is what i mean when i say warrior. This is a battle of the mind, the heart the soul, and not a physical one. Use the gifts and talents that you have, that you have been taught, reawaken them and bring them forward. No one can pass kauai. No one. Kauai people are unique and blessed people. show that. step forward. speak out. resist. but stay lawful, don't get hurt, protect your family and your children because family comes first. But remember what you stand on, the land not concrete. remember what your ceiling is, the sky and not wood. remember what your clothing is, and your food, and what nourishes you. protect that. preserve that aloha no"

anne punohu

kalaheo

I was there-We are all Kauaians on this day!

The inspirational chant by Kauka Sabre. hHere were plenty of Kanaka Maoli against the Superferry. On this day, at this moment, we did not care who was who or what color of skin you had or where you were from or how long you had been here.. We were all warriors for the 'aina. And I was proud to have been there. Read the book "The Superferry Chronicles."

This is what happens when a community has been harassed, threatened, and set upon by military tactics and arrested children. THe children who opened the ceremonies were the ones that were arrested. We can forgive but we can never forget.
*CAUTION* THERE IS A SWEAR WORD IN THIS VIDEO>CAUTION WITH YOUNGER VIEWERS!!***

I Was THere:The arrest of children at the Superferry Protest

THese were just kids. Most were born and raised on Kaua'i. There were just as many locals, and people who had lived on Kauai for decades as there were newcomers. I was one of the poeple running along the wall shouting at the kids where to go to get safe. I am proud that I was there. I make no apologies. Read the book the "Superferry Chronicles", for my testimony.

Joanne Yukimura:ALWAYS on the side of the people!!