Labella: Don’t give up on passengers

CEBU City Vice Mayor Edgar Labella called on search and rescue teams not to give up in their efforts to find passengers from the sunken MV St. Thomas Aquinas.

Recalling his own ordeal in the Sept. 8, 1998 sinking of the MV Princess of the Orient of Sulpicio Lines, Labella said he was afloat for 36 hours clad in a life vest until he was found by rescuers.

“I was the last survivor,” Labella recalled. The vessel he rode in sailed from the port of Manila even in the middle of a typhoon.

It capsized about 12:55 pm. near Fortune Island in Batangas, leaving 150 of its 388 passengers dead.

Cebu City Mayor Michael Rama called a press conference to allow officials of 2GO to give updates on the search for passengers of their roll-on-roll-off ship which sank at Lawis Ledge in Talisay City last Friday night.

Labella recalled that he wore his life vest and jumped out of the boat when he noticed that it was about to capsize.

He said he never thought that he would survive the night.

He said his faith in God and prayers made him survive his ordeal.

“I am positive that there are more survivors in this sea mishap since the ship sank near the shoreline,” he said. Correspondent Michelle Joy L. Padayhag