Sea

© Inosmi.ru photo

Spausdinti   Supplement to article

Last year, on July 20, a passenger ship Bulgaria sank with 122 victims. This story still heats passions in Russia. At the end of 2011, the trials have been started for those ignorant captains of other vessels that were passing by. One of such ships was Arbat, which was sailing by the sinking ship Bulgaria. The captain of the ship Jurij Tuchin received a fine of 130 thousand rubles (11 thousand LTL). The captain of Arbat has already suffered: he was put to jail and experienced a heart attack, was put into an intensive care.

Another captain of Dunaiskij 66 Aleksandr Jegorov was also put on trial. His circumstances were somewhat different from those of Arbat, because Dunaiskij 66  was pushing a barge and could not suddenly stop, while the ship was sinking. Its stopping way would have been about two kilometers. Dunaiskij 66 was not able to help sinking Bulgaria and might have even prevented smaller ships from rescuing passengers.

The first to rescue drowning passengers was the captain of Arabella. Its captain Roman Lizalin claimed that he asked other ships to pass by so as not to disturb rescuing operation.

Bulgaria ship sank on 10 July, 2011, when during a strong wind, it made a turn and went on one side into the water. The ship sank faster than 5 minutes. Out of 201 passengers of the ship, only 79 managed to survive. Out of 122 deceased, 28 were children. The ship sank into the depth of 20 meters, 3 kilometers away from the shore.