Philippine ferry fire death toll reaches 35, more bodies expected

On Saturday morning, the first of what authorities feared would be many body bags arrived at a port near Coron, a resort town in Palawan province. Thirty bodies had been recovered from the M/V June Aster, a ferry that caught fire Wednesday evening and sank off the Philippine coast. The death toll stood at 35, but coast guard officials made clear that number would climb. Fifty-four people remained unaccounted for.

The fire had started in the cargo hold and consumed the vessel almost instantaneously. According to survivors' accounts relayed by coast guard spokeswoman Noemie Cayabyab, the sequence was brutal in its speed: a loud explosion, then smoke, then flames spreading through the ship in seconds. Those who escaped had no time to put on life jackets. The ferry's manifest showed 134 crew and passengers were supposed to be aboard, though two never boarded. The ship was also carrying cargo, an electric vehicle, a pickup truck, and motorcycles.

At the port, tents were erected to receive the recovered remains. The bodies had been found in the economy accommodation area of the ship. Cayabyab explained that the first transfer had been limited to 30 bodies because of the capacity of the patrol vessel doing the transport. More cadavers remained aboard the ferry, and authorities promised an update on their retrieval later that day. The remains would be handed to police forensic investigators for identification before families could be notified of their loved ones' fates.

Thirty passengers and thirteen crew members had been rescued. Among those still missing was Rammel Gonzaga, a 40-year-old businessman who had boarded the ferry from Manila for a work trip with his brother-in-law. His sister, Myra Cabilan, had flown to Coron to search for him. His wife had given birth a month earlier to their daughter. "At dawn, I still believed he survived," Cabilan told reporters, her voice breaking. "But he's still missing. I have lost hope."

Hundreds of people desperate for information had begun posting on the Facebook page of a local mayor, searching for relatives, friends, and even a missing dog. The disaster was not an anomaly in the Philippines. The archipelago nation, with more than 7,000 islands and a population of 116 million, depends on inter-island ferries for transport, but many of these vessels are cheap and poorly regulated. In January, a triple-decker ferry carrying more than 340 people sank in the southern Philippines, killing at least 52. That same ferry route had been the site of another disaster in 2023, when a fire aboard the Lady Mary Joy 3 killed 31 people. The company operating the M/V June Aster, Atienza Interisland Ferries Inc, said it was cooperating fully with the investigation, but the pattern of maritime disasters in Philippine waters suggested systemic vulnerabilities that extended far beyond any single operator or vessel.