VLADIVOSTOK, February 27 (Itar-Tass) — No dead bodies have been found on a rescue motorboat from the Kolskaya rig that was cast ashore of the Iturup Island of the Kurils chain, the press service of the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry’s (EMERCOM) main department for the Sakhalin region reported on Monday.
The floating oil rig sank in the centre of the Sea of Okhotsk on December 18, 2011. There were 67 people on the Kolskaya rig, 14 of them were rescued and the bodies of 17 drowned people were lifted from the water, 36 people are missing.
The motorboat with the Kolskaya-1 sign was spotted nearly 45 days after the tragedy, and “no dead bodies were found on it, several holes were seen in its sides,” the EMERCOM department specified.
The motorboat was examined on February 25 by officers of the Kurilsk fire fighting squad. The bright red coloured rescue boat had been spotted back on January 30, 2012 about 50 metres from the shore by the keepers of a lighthouse, which stands on the rocky southern tip of the Urup Island on Cape Van-der-Linda, but they had no opportunity to examine the boat. It was done by fire fighters who were specially sent from the Urup to the Iturup Island.
This empty motorboat is the last witness of the sinking of the Kolskaya floating rig that was towed from the western coast of Kamchatka to Sakhalin by the Magadan icebreaker and transport-tug vessel Neftegaz-55. The rig capsized in a storm with huge waves and sank 200 miles off the coast of Sakhalin Island at a depth of over 1,000 metres.