But the families of nearly 300 passengers still missing from a sunken ferry boat have nothing to cling on to but hope.
It's been more than 24 hours since the ferry, which carried 475 people, sank off the southwestern coast of South Korea.
Nine people are dead. At
least 179 have been rescued. But no one knows whether the 287 still
missing are alive, perhaps on the ship, or if they succumbed to the
frigid water about 10 degrees Celsius (50 degrees Fahrenheit.)
"I am sorry," Lee Joon
Suk, the captain of the ship, told reporters Thursday as they peppered
him with questions about what happened.
"I am at a loss for words," he said, as he sat at a Coast Guard station, facing possible charges of negligence.
At the Peng Mok Harbor in
Jindu, about 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the site of the accident,
family members spend the hours staring at the water.
They have camped out here since Wednesday. Mothers and grandmothers huddled together, crying and comforting each other.
Chang Min, whose son is a
second grader, said he was furious that search officials were using the
word "investigation" and not the word "rescue."
"If the government cares for the people, our family, our children, please rescue our families and our children," he said.
He, like many others, are angry at the pace of the process.
But rescue officials are
at the mercy of the elements. It's drizzling, making for poor
visibility. The water currents are powerful, making for dangerous
operations.
On Thursday afternoon, crews were trying to get a crane out to stabilize the ship.
"The maritime police
told them they will start the rescue process again today," Chang said.
"I'm going to wait and try to trust them and believe in them. But if
they say they can't, I'm going to grab them and drag them into the sea.
We'll die together."
Hope for survival
The hope for survivors largely hinges on whether trapped passengers are in isolated pockets of air on the ship.
Most of the bedrooms of the 353 passengers were on the fourth level of the five-floor boat.
But passengers faced a
terrifying choice as the vessel rolled: obey commands barked over
loudspeakers to stay in place, or don life vests and jump into the
chilly ocean water.
"Don't move," a voice warned, according to a recording obtained by CNN affiliate YTN. "If you move, it's dangerous. Don't move."
That announcement, some witnesses worried, may have cost some passengers on the Sewol ferry their lives.
"We were told to stay
where you are, so we kept staying," survivor Hyun Hung Chang told YTN.
"But later on, the water level came up. So we were beside ourselves.
Kids were screaming out of terror, shouting for help."
"Kids were forced to stay put," another survivor told YTN. "So only some of those who moved survived."
'Please come back'
At Ansan Danwon High
School in the suburb of Seoul, parents sat on mats, clutching their cell
phones for a call from their children that never came.
On one wall, officials
have posted a list of names. Once a confirmation of a rescue came, they
circled that name. On Wednesday, soon after the ship sank, several names
were circled in rapid succession.
But so many remain untouched.
At one point Wednesday, the school announced that all students had been rescued but soon backtracked, to the parents' wrath.
Even though the school was closed Thursday, students and teachers arrived to seek comfort in numbers.
"Please be alive," said messages written in classroom chalkboards. "Please come back."
On Thursday, several
parents took a boat to try to go the accident site. But several of them
became so distraught that they fainted. The boat turned back.
Link to source: http://edition.cnn.com\
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