Squall blamed for capsizing of tourist boat off Boracay

Boracay Island. A squall caused the motorboat Kevin 2 to capsize off Boracay Wednesday, Oct. 3, 2012, causing the deaths of three Taiwanese tourists and hospitalization of six others, the Philippine Coast Guard said Thursday. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines—It was a squall, a brief but violent sea storm, that caused the motorboat Kevin 2 to capsize off Boracay island Wednesday afternoon, causing the deaths of three Taiwanese tourists and hospitalization of six others, the Philippine Coast Guard said Thursday.

In a maritime incident report to the PCG headquarters in Manila, the PCG Caticlan station in Malay, Aklan, said the vessel was on an island-hopping tour with at least 30 Taiwanese tourists aboard when the squall battered it around 1:45 p.m. Wednesday, causing it to capsize off the village of Manoc-Manoc on Boracay.

It identified the fatalities as two women, Chang Hi Ling, 49, and Lai Yu Mei, 71, and a 3-year-old girl Chen Szu Ching. They were declared dead on arrival at a hospital in the island-resort.

Twenty-seven other Taiwanese nationals and a Filipino crew member of the vessel were rescued by PCG personnel and local fishermen.

Twenty-one of the tourists were “in good condition and have returned to their hotel, the Fairways Blue Water Resort,” from the Don Ciriaco Tirol Memorial Hospital on Boracay where they had been treated.

Six other Taiwanese nationals and a crew member were still confined at the Baptist Hospital in Caticlan, the gateway to Boracay, the report said.

Initial PCG investigation showed that “at around 1:45 p.m. on Wednesday, while the Kevin 2, owned and operated by Allan Brillantes and skippered by Emeterio Niel, was island-hopping, it was battered by a squall near Manoc-Manoc, causing it to capsize.”

At about the same time, two local tourists drowned in a separate incident on Boracay.

“With the two incidents in one day, resulting in loss of lives, the PCG-Caticlan station was directed to coordinate with the Malay municipal government and other concerned groups to discuss the issues at hand with an end view of preventing the occurrence of similar incidents in the future,” said the PCG headquarters.

The PCG is trying to determine if the Kevin 2 was overloaded when it left one of Boracay’s boat stations for the island-hopping tour.

All the Taiwanese tourists were wearing life vests when the boat capsized, according to the PCG station in Caticlan.