Aussie among dead in Vietnam boat disaster

Officials in Vietnam are investigating what caused a boat to sink while anchored in the spectacular Halong Bay, drowning 10 young foreign tourists, including a Briton, named as 30-year-old Stuart McCormick and Australian resident, Lam Ngoc Chau, 32. Two Vietnamese were also killed, including the tour guide.

A surviving Australian, also of Vietnamese origin, was named as Nguyen Duy Khuong.

Amid reports that the boat, Truong Hai, had "problems with its machinery", police and staff from foreign embassies were interviewing survivors to try to piece together what caused the vessel, anchored for the night in a calm sea close to Titov Island, to sink in minutes shortly before dawn. Luckily, the crew managed to send a distress call.

Most of the 15 survivors - nine of them foreign tourists, the rest Vietnamese - had been on deck, to take pictures of the sunrise. Witnesses said a wooden plank suddenly ripped off the hull and water rapidly flooded in while the crew struggled to contain it. The survivors were picked up by boats answering the distress call. Authorities said all of the dead had been asleep in their cabins and were trapped by the pressure of the water.

George Fosmire, a 23-year-old American tourist, said the alarm was raised by his girlfriend. He said she had drowned, with another young woman who was sharing their cabin. She had said: "Oh my God. The ship is sinking. We need to get off." Mr Fosmire, who escaped through a window as water flooded their cabin, added: "The whole thing took between 30 seconds and a minute. I had to put my face to the ceiling to suck any air."

The survivors were wrapped in blankets and taken to hospital or nearby hotels to recover; the bodies of the dead, the two Vietnamese, two Americans, Holly Pyle, 25 and Samantha Taylor, 21, two Russians, two Swedes, the Briton, a French citizen, one Japanese and one Swiss, were taken to Bai Chay hospital mortuary.

Reports said most of them were aged between 20 and 25. "Crew members tried to stop the water and alerted the tourists who were sleeping, but the water came in and the boat sank quickly," Vu Van Thin, the chief administrator of Quang Ninh province, said.

The Foreign Office said Mr McCormick's next of kin had been informed. A team from the British embassy is working with the local authorities and hospitals to establish whether other British citizens are involved.

A visit to Halong Bay, a Unesco World Heritage site with more than 1,900 limestone islets, is usually a magical event and the site is hugely important to the tourism industry in Vietnam, which has been increasingly opening up to foreign visitors over the past 20 years. Last year, Vietnam had 4.6 million visitors, an increase of 36 per cent on the previous year. Up to half of them visit Halong Bay, 125 miles north-east of Hanoi, to spent a night on the water, slipping past the karst formations and stopping off to visit cave networks. About 100 tourist boats ply the bay.

There are more than 100 vessels licensed to operate there. Tuan, a former tour guide who runs the Viet Value travel agency, said safety is not a priority for all operators. He said: "I always stress to tourists that they need to do some research about the operators."

One bay boat operator said the boat was "small and very cheap; there was a problem with the machinery on the boat". He added: "Some people disappeared. The police and local people are trying to find them." Police said the poor condition of the boat was to blame.

"All the boats out there look very tired," said Tracey Johnson, a travel guide for Australian company Intrepid Travel, who has spent six years taking tourists to Ha Long Bay.

"There are so many backpackers who want the cheapest trip and they're (the boats) very overcrowded," she said.

Another travel specialist and native of Ha Long City told AAP that Truong Hai boats were "for backpackers".

Many tour companies and hotels in Hanoi buy spaces from boats for their passengers rather than operating their own junks - the type of boat most commonly used in Ha Long tours.

A Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said after the investigation was completed, tour companies should improve safety measures at Halong Bay. "This is a very rare and very unfortunate accident," she said.

Weather in the bay can be deadly. In 2009, a tour boat sank in a storm, killing five, including three tourists. In 2006, another storm capsized several boats, killing 13 people; and in 2002, strong winds overturned two tourist boats, killing several foreigners.

Yesterday, despite the tragedy, tourists were still taking boat trips.

- INDEPENDENT, AAP