Catering entrepreneur Sytse Schoustra, who lives at the port of Terschelling, received a report on Friday morning via his VHF radio, which he always has on. “I immediately heard the panic,” he says. ‘I couldn’t see anything at sea, because it was very dark and the accident happened a few hundred meters from the coast. But the lifeboats are at my doorstep. In no time I saw a lot of flashing lights and a helicopter hovered over the sea.’
Not much later, it became known that two people had died that morning off the coast of Terschelling in a collision between a water taxi and an express service. Two others, an adult man and a 12-year-old boy, are still missing. The hope that she is still alive is gone, the coast guard says.
The police are still looking for the bodies with sonar equipment on Friday evening. The emergency services are meanwhile scouring the beaches of Terschelling. ‘The water can flow quickly between the islands and there is ebb and flow’, says Jan Hansen of the coastguard. “That complicates the search.”
construction company
The accident took place at around 7:15 am. The Stormloper water taxi, which was about to dock in the port of Terschelling, was cut through by the express service Tiger, of shipping company Doeksen. All eight people on board, including seven passengers and a captain, were thrown into the water.
Among the passengers were three employees and three subcontractors of a construction company from Sneek. They were on their way to Terschelling for work. One of the employees had taken his 12-year-old son with him.
The Skua, a private fast boat that is also used for rescue operations, was the first on site, according to Jan Hansen of the coastguard. “They got four passengers out of the water at 7:32 am, three of whom were hypothermic and one had a head injury.” Five minutes later, a fifth person was found by the Skua.
Islander Douwe Wiegman saw around eight o’clock in the morning how ‘the water taxi had sailed in half’. He was on his way to Vlieland to pick someone up. The front of the ship was now lying on a sandbank, the rear was towed away.
Eleven lifeboats and three helicopters from various emergency services were also involved in the rescue operation. One of the helicopters signaled a sixth person in the water at 8.34 am, who was subsequently resuscitated in vain. Three of the rescued passengers were slightly injured and one seriously injured. They were transferred to the hospital on Terschelling and the Medical Center Leeuwarden.
Police are investigating
Ferry service Tiger, of shipping company Doeksen, had a hole in the hull after the accident and therefore received permission from the emergency services to continue sailing to Harlingen. None of the 27 people on board (21 passengers and six crew members) were injured.
The national unit has started an investigation as a standard procedure. Both the captain of the water taxi and the captain of the ferry service have been detained for questioning. “It is not yet a criminal offense at the moment,” said a spokesperson.
The cause of the accident is currently unknown. The weather was calm, except for a local shower, says a spokesman for the KNMI. There was little wind and although it was still dark, visibility was good and the KNMI had not issued a warning code. A maximum speed of 20 kilometers per hour is allowed at the accident site.
According to Anne van de Meer, spokesperson for Rijkswaterstaat, ships normally sail in ‘a left and a right lane marked with buoys.’ The spokesperson for the Dutch Safety Board, which has launched an exploratory investigation separately from the police, does not want to confirm whether they also check whether the sailing route has been deviated from.
Dozens of accidents
Every year, several dozen accidents occur in commercial and recreational shipping, according to figures from Rijkswaterstaat. Last year, five people were killed and twelve seriously injured, mainly among people who were on the water for fun. There were no casualties in a collision between a water taxi and a tour boat in Rotterdam last July. At the end of August, a 12-year-old student from The Hague was killed on the Waddenzee by a broken boom of a sailing clipper.
Caroline van der Pol, the mayor of Terschelling, spoke of ‘a terrible day’ during a press conference. “Sorrow and mourning reign on the island. It is indigestible that people have had to lose their lives.’
The fatal accident off the coast of Terschelling has ‘enormous impact on the island’, says catering entrepreneur Sytse Schoustra. Islanders and tourists gathered at his coffeehouse on the harbor on Friday to seek support from each other. “They sat together on the terrace, hat in hand.”