Ship in distress in the Caspian Sea carried oil workers

The passenger ship "PS 173" gave a distress signal at about 21.00 on 26 January after the crew found water filling in the bow when the ship was in the Caspian Sea near Bulla Island, 30 km away from the Apsheron coast.

The press service of "Azerbaijan Caspian Shipping Company" CJSC (ACSC) reported that passenger ships "Gobustan" and "Giz Galasy", which were nearby, arrived to the place of the emergency incident.

Seven crew members and 25 passengers from "PS 173" were evacuated to these ships.

The vessel "PS 173" itself was taken in tow by the ship "Caspian Spirit" and, they are heading to the shore. "More detailed information will be provided after the causes of the emergency are clarified," the report said.

Rashad Bayramov, one of the passengers of the "PS 173", told Turan that the ship was carrying oil workers.

"Our shift was over. We had to return home. In the afternoon, a ship arrived and started taking oil workers from the platforms. When the ship was already returning to shore, the instruction came to sail towards Alyat to pick up a sick person there," said Bayramov, who works on one of SOCAR's oil platforms.

According to him, the crew did not want to sail towards Alyat because it is dangerous for ships to sail in that direction at night.

"The thing is that there are many trestles there, left from the Soviet times, the upper parts of which were cut off for scrap metal. Their lower parts remained under water. The ship bumped into one of the bases of these trestles and because of the resulting hole, the lower part of the ship was filled with water in a matter of minutes," Bayramov said.

Life rafts were lowered into the water and passengers jumped onto them, he said.

"It is good that we called the Ministry of Emergency Situations, other structures and nearby vessels came to the rescue and took us away. Fortunately, no one drowned or disappeared. The vessel was taken in tow by another ship," the man said.