VIRAC, Philippines—Authorities on Sunday went in search for a motorized banca with an unconscious fisherman on board, after his companion was rescued in the sea off Camarines Sur last Saturday.
Bob Monterola of the Office of Civil Defense in Legazpi City told the Philippine Daily Inquirer that fishermen Ramon Santelices and Mark Anthony de los Santos found the surviving fisherman, Michael Toonan, 20, still alive while floating near Cimarron island about 12 kilometers north of Garchitorena town, in the afternoon of March 24.
The weak and dehydrated survivor was brought to Barangay (village) Sumaoy and rushed by ambulance the following morning to the municipal hospital where he was being nursed back to health.
Toonan and his missing companion, Efren Templonuevo, 58, left Barangay District II in Gigmoto town, some 50 kilometers from here, at 5 a.m. of March 20 to fish in the municipal seawaters of the neighboring town of Viga despite the heavy rains then pounding Bicol and an alert from disaster officials warning fishermen to stay on shore, said Nieva Santelices, in charge of the provincial disaster risk reduction management council (PDRRMC) in Catanduanes.
They were on board a motorized banca owned by Teresa Tolledo, she said.
Monterola said Toonan has not recounted the full details of his four-day ordeal but he managed to tell his rescuers that he had tied the unconscious Templonuevo to the engine of their banca before trying to swim ashore shortly after he spotted Cimarron island.
Monterola added OCD-5 was coordinating with the PDRRMCs in Catanduanes and Camarines Sur to bring Toonan back to his town.
Captain Ivanhoe Arcilla of the 905th Philippine Coast Guard Auxiliary Squadron said a patrol boat of the Philippine Navy has been put on standby for word from the Navy Islander plane conducting the aerial search for it to proceed to the rescue site if the banca and Templonuevo were spotted from the air.
The Navy plane, however, failed to find the missing fisherman.