A speedboat and a water taxi collided between Terschelling and Vlieland, two of the Wadden Islands in the Netherlands. The emergency services are still looking for one missing person after the collision, the Safety Region reports. This is a 12 year old child. Two people who were in the water taxi were seriously injured and had to be resuscitated.
The collision happened between water taxi ‘Stormloper’ and the express boat ‘Tiger’ of shipping company Doeksen, reports ‘Omrop Fryslân’. There would have been a total of 27 people on board the ferry (21 passengers and 6 crew members) and according to the Royal Dutch Rescue Company (KNRM), another 7 were on board the water taxi.
CPR
The KNRM has picked up several people “from the incident location”. It concerns “7 people involved”, who were on the water taxi. A search is still underway for one missing person. It concerns a 12-year-old child, a spokesperson for the Coastguard Center reported. There are three rescue boats and two salvage boats on site, an air ambulance has been called in. A search of the ship has not yet led to the missing child being found.
Four people were immediately taken out of the water earlier, another person was later rescued from the sea. This was the first victim to be resuscitated. After that, there were two missing persons, one of whom was found around 08:30. He also had to be resuscitated. The first seriously injured person has since been taken to hospital on the mainland. The spokesman could not tell how the second person is doing. The spokesperson does not know whether the people on the water taxi were wearing a life jacket.
The accident is said to have happened a few hundred meters off the coast of the port of Terschelling, in the Schuitengat, a channel in the Wadden Sea. The water taxi has “as good as sunk”, says an eyewitness to the Dutch broadcaster NOS. The ferry made water, but was able to continue and has now safely reached nearby Harlingen on the mainland.
Research
The Dutch Safety Board has left for Harlingen for an exploratory investigation into the collision. Nothing is known about its cause yet. “The police will investigate that,” said the Coast Guard. That also indicates that the weather and visibility was “reasonably good” on site.
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