Cruise Liner Sinks
More than 1,100 people, many of them Americans, scrambled overboard early Friday when a luxury cruise liner caught fire and sank off the western coast of Malaysia.
The Marine Rescue and Coordination Center in Port Klang said officials believed all passengers and crew aboard the ship had been brought to safety.
Passengers said there was panic and chaos when they were ordered to abandon the Bahamian-registered ship the Sun Vista. They spent several hours in lifeboats before being rescued.
There are no reports of fatalities, officials said.
A total of 1,124 passengers and crew of 26 nationalities were picked up by a dozen ferries and naval vessels and were arriving on Penang island in northwestern Malaysia. The center said four rescue vessels had already arrived in Penang and another one was due to arrive in Port Klang, about 30 miles from Kuala Lumpur, later in the day.
Rescued passengers spoke of panic and chaos.
"What actually happened is lack of information because the captain did not tell us about the fire. All the crew members looked panicky," passenger Thomas Bonnard, 62, of England, told the Malaysian news agency Bernama.
When they abandoned ship, he said, they took to 18 lifeboats and four life rafts.
"We felt bad when they asked us to move onto a tugboat, as the boat was also used to fight the fire," Bonnard said.
Australian passenger Joy Smith told the Australian Associated Press that they spent five or six hours floating in a lifeboat before they were picked up.
"It was pretty traumatic," she said from her hotel in Penang. "We're alive," she added, bursting into tears.
Ten passengers were sent to Penang Hospital for treatment, Bernama reported. A hospital spokesman said their conditions were not yet known. It also said the liner's captain was taken to a local police station to file a report on the sinking.
The passengers were being put up in three hotels in Penang, but many of them had lost their belongings and passports.
Eighty-five of the passengers were Australians. Other passengers included Americans, Britons, Germans, Belgians, French, Indians, Indonesians, Japanese, Mexicans, Russians, Spanish and Swiss.
Fourteen ships, including government and private ferries, were involved in the rescue. Six vessels and a police plane remained at the site to monitor an oil leak from the Sun Vista.
The 700-foot-long Sun Vista can hold more than 1,600 passengers and crew in its 547 cabins. It has eight decks, five whirlpool baths, a swimming pool, beauty salon, bars and casinos.
The ship's journey originated in Singapore, stopped to pick up more passengers in the Malaysian city of Malacca and then sailed on to the resort island of Phuket off the southern coast of Thailand. The Sun Vista was on its way back to its base in Singapore when it sank on the last leg of its six-day cruise.