KHABAROVSK, November 2 (Itar-Tass) — A Be-200 plane of the Emergencies Ministry and ships have examined about 8,000 sq km in the Sea of Okhotsk during the five days of search for the missing Amurskaya freighter, which disappeared near the Shantar Islands on October 28.
The ground groups examined 71 km of the coast line.
The search is unsuccessful so far. The fate of the nine crewmembers is unknown, a source at the Russian Emergencies Ministry's Far Eastern regional centre told Itar-Tass on Friday.
During the investigation into the case of the missing freighter, which had more than 700 tonnes of gold-containing ore aboard, many violations of the shipping and cargo transportation regulations were discovered.
On October 28, the vessel left the port of Kiran, the Tugur-Chumikan district in the Khabarovsk Territory, for the port of Okhotsk in a storm with the wind of more than 17 m/sec and three-metre waves.
The weight of the ore loaded into the ship was 100-150 tonnes more than the maximum permissible cargo weight. Experts suppose high moisture of the ore, which was kept ashore in rainy weather in the open air, and water that got into the holes in the storm could cause movement of the heavy cargo, and it could cause turning over and sinking of the vessel.
The crew left for the route without permission of the appropriate services and had no right to transport ore. The route also seems strange to the investigators.
The owner of the Amurskaya is the Nikolayevsky-on-Amur Sea Port company.
Ships in the sea and groups on the coast continue the search. Aircraft are not used because of the bad weather, a source at the Emergencies Ministry's Khabarovsk regional department said.
The rescue coordination centre in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk every two hours inform the crews of all the vessels in the region about the search and ask them to particularly attentively examine the areas around.