Survivor sightings `ignored' in report
17.04.2007
WITNESSES in search aircraft looking for five people missing after the Immigration vessel Malu Sara sank in the Torres Strait reported seeing people alive in the water the day after the tragedy.
But the first day of a coroner's hearing into the sinking heard that their statements were discounted and left out of the official report into the disaster, despite details of what the ``survivors'' were wearing.
In a surprising twist, Ralph Devlin SC for the Immigration Department asked Kit Filor, the author of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau report into the tragedy, if he had seen witness statements from State Emergency Service personnel saying they had seen a person alive in the water on October 16, 2005, the day after the Malu Sara sank.
Mr Filor -- who is now retired but at the time was the ATSB deputy director, surface safety investigations -- told the hearing before state coroner Michael Barnes he had read a search-and-rescue report that described ``somebody in a red or yellow jacket waving his arms''.
Mr Devlin asked Mr Filor if the witness statement came from a civilian aircraft with an SES officer on board.
Mr Devlin then quoted from the witness statement: ``A person alive in the water was located at 4pm on Saturday, October 15, and again contact was made at 1pm on Sunday, October 16 -- but we do not see any mention of that in the ATSB report.''
Mr Filor said he was not made aware of the detail of the reported sightings.
``We were made aware that sightings had been made but were discounted,'' Mr Filor replied.
The Malu Sara has never been found and the body of only one of the five people on board has been discovered.
Mr Filor was later asked by Michael Fellows, counsel for Immigration Department officer Garry Chaston, if he had seen a report of a sighting of a person in the water ``with a large, brown pole''.
He said he had not been made aware of that detail, and it was then put that the sighting could have been the skipper of the
Malu Sara, Wilfred Baira, who was known to have with him on the boat a ``wap'', a 5m spear used for hunting dugong.
The inquest, set down for two weeks of evidence on Thursday Island, began yesterday with Mr Barnes inspecting the five sister ships that were supplied with the Malu Sara as Immigration patrol vessels.
They had been stored immediately after the Malu Sara sank and yesterday Mr Barnes was shown the workings of the boats, the poor welding, the scuppers below the water-line, and the lack of basic navigation equipment on board. Mr Filor confirmed in his evidence that the vessels were unseaworthy.
In other evidence yesterday, Mr Filor was questioned about the availability of helicopters that could have searched for survivors much earlier than occurred after the vessel sank at about 2.15am on October 15.
It was suggested that his report did not investigate the availability of search aircraft from Cairns, Darwin or Brisbane and that, while the helicopter on nearby Horn Island was unable to fly in the difficult conditions, efforts should have been made to find one that could.
