Accident involving tourists: High-speed ferry HongKong – Macau

Two Korean visitors and one Japanese tourist were among fifty-seven people that were injured, some seriously, when a high-speed ferry carrying 220 passengers, including many tourists and local residents and 13 crew members from Hong Kong slammed into a breakwater off the main ferry pier in Macau on Friday morning.

The TurboJet ferry, Cacilhas, mounted the breakwater and had listed to its right at about 9.30am, according to Macau’s marine and water bureau.

At least four rescue boats were dispatched to evacuate passengers from the jetfoil. They were ferried to the inner harbour ferry terminal and a temporary pier at Taipa, the smaller of the two islands in Macau.

At 12.30pm, 35 men and 22 women including at least one crew member were reported injured, according to the Macau government.

Paramedics assessed the injured at the ferry terminal and the Taipa pier before sending them to a local hospital.

The spokeswoman said most suffered minor injuries. “So far, none of them is in a life-threatening situation,” she said.

The Macau government said they would launch an investigation into the cause of the incident.

The Macau-bound jetfoil left the Hong Kong-Macau ferry terminal in Sheung Wan at about 8.30am.

The incident occurred as it entered Macau’s inner harbour at about 9.30am.

TurboJet said the ferry was travelling at a speed of 64km/h at the time of the incident. Weather conditions were said to be fine.

The Cacilhas received its last annual inspection in July last year and the captain had 34 years of sailing experience on the same type of vessel, according to the operator.

At least 10 incidents where ferries collided with other ships, buoys, or docks have been reported in the in the past few years. The most serious occurred when a Hongkong Electric boat collided with a ferry off Lamma Island in October 2012, resulting in 39 killed and 92 injured. It was the the deadliest boat accident in Hong Kong in over 40 years.

Relatives of passengers killed in the Lamma ferry tragedy announced last month that they were preparing to sue the government for compensation and the right to see in full a damning internal report into the disaster.

The government released a summary in April, pinpointing misconduct by 17 unnamed officials and “suspected criminality” as well as “serious systemic failings” in the Marine Department.

In May, more than 30 people were injured when a high-speed ferry also operated by Shun Tak and carrying 162 passengers collided with a mainland cargo ship in waters off Cheung Chau ferry pier. That collision followed another incident in November in which a ferry bound for Macau apparently hit some kind of refuse in the water, causing it to suddenly stop and injuring 87 people.

TurboJet has established emergency hotlines – 852 2859 3333(Hong Kong) and 853 2870 3661(Macau) – for today’s incident.