Likoni Ferry Tragedy

Kenya Navy divers have retrieved a body of a man from the Indian Ocean at the Likoni crossing channel.

This comes hours after a saloon car with an unknown occupants plunged into the waters at 4:20 am on Saturday.

KENYA NAVY divers retrieve body of a man from the ocean at the Likoni Channel after a vehicle plunged into the water earlier today. pic.twitter.com/8o80CUU2Wc

— NationBreakingNews (@NationBreaking) December 7, 2019

According to the Kenya Ferry Services, a motorist driving a saloon car whose registration number plate has not yet been established drove off to the ramps with high speed to the ocean even after being flagged by our ramp controllers despite efforts to slow him down and stop.

The incident comes barely three months after Mariam Kighenda, 35, and her four-year-old daughter Amanda Mutheu died after their car slid from the rear of MV Harambee just before it docked on the Island side.

Recovery operations are still underway, with Mombasa governor Ali Hassan Joho noting that he had immediately dispatched a unit from our inspectorate department to join multi agency rescue team in the ongoing operation.

Early this morning we had another tragic moment at the Likoni ferry channel where a saloon car plunged into the Indian Ocean from the Likoni mainland ramp. I immediately dispatched a unit from our inspectorate department to join multi agency rescue team in the ongoing operation.

— Governor Hassan Joho (@HassanAliJoho) December 7, 2019

The county chief has urged all ferry users and management to excercise extreme caution.

“In the meantime I urge all ferry users and management to excercise extreme caution as we join the families of the occupants in the vehicle in prayer. We cannot afford to have any more casualties in similar fashion more so when it can be avoided,” he posted.

In the meantime I urge all ferry users and management to excercise extreme caution as we join the families of the occupants in the vehicle in prayer. We cannot afford to have any more casualties in similar fashion more so when it can be avoided.

— Governor Hassan Joho (@HassanAliJoho) December 7, 2019

Another vehicle has plunged into the Indian Ocean at the Likoni Channel in Mombasa.

The incident comes barely three months after a woman and her daughter died at the channel after their car plunged into the ocean.

Breaking News: Another car plunges into the Ocean at 4:20am after driving off with speed at the Likoni ferry channel. Occupants who were in the car haven’t been established.

— Ali 'Mwamvita' Manzu (@Ali_Manzu) December 7, 2019

Officials said the Saloon car was on the mainland side of the channel when the driver drove into the sea from the ramp at around 4.20 am Saturday.

Kenya Ferry Service (KFS) said in a statement that the driver of the vehicle drove at high speed after purchasing a ticket and plunged into the water.

KFS said search is underway and the number of occupants remains unknown.

Update: Search for saloon car that plunged into the ocean at the Likoni Channel underway

Photos by @ahmedmohaa2000 pic.twitter.com/E4s5Z1aPzs

— Daily Nation (@dailynation) December 7, 2019

As hopes fade of finding the bodies of a mother and daughter who died in a ferry accident, the Christian family has been urged to sacrifice an animal to appease bloodthirsty sea gods.

Mariam Kighenda and her four-year-old daughter, Amanda Mutheu, died when their car rolled off the Likoni ferry on September 23. The ferry lacked restraining chains, gates or a drawbridge. 

Mijikenda elder Mwinyihamisi Mwakinyasi said it will take recovery teams a long time to retrieve the bodies because the gods are holding the wreckage inside their caves.

“The gods feed on blood. If they do not get blood, they take it for themselves. Animal blood will satisfy them. But modernity has made people forget these things.

“The gods feed on blood. If they do not get blood, they take it for themselves. Animal blood will satisfy them. But modernity has made people forget these things,”Mijikenda elder

“A tragedy like this reminds us they exist and need to be recognised,” Mwakinyasi said. Only after an animal is sacrificed will the bodies be found, he predicted.

The channel once was an offering site for the Digo elders to avert tragedies caused by evil sea spirits, he said.

The family has so far resisted calls from residents and Mijikenda elders to perform rituals to appease the gods and persuade them to release the bodies.

The Star has learnt, however, that the desperate family is beginning to consider an animal sacrifice to the sea gods that demand blood.

The family was to meet Sunday and performing rituals was on the agenda, widower John Wambua confirmed.

“I am rushing to the meeting now. There are talks and it (rituals) are on the agenda,” he told the Star on Sunday.

Family spokesperson Luke Mbati has rejected the calls for ritual sacrifice.

“We don’t believe in these traditions. It is against our Christian faith. We will continue with prayers and the bodies of our loved ones will be found in Jesus’ name,” he told journalists earlier this week.

For decades, the Mijikenda elders had been conducting rituals at the ferry crossing to avert dangers posed by the sea gods.

Residents say the gods are angry after being starved of blood for a long time. Therefore, they chose Mariam and Amanda as a sacrifice.

“We don’t believe in these traditions. It is against our Christian faith. We will continue with prayers and the bodies of our loved ones will be found in Jesus’ name,” said Family spokesman Luke Mbati

Meantime, the government announced that South African expert divers will start searching on Tuesday.

South African divers will aid the search.

“The first batch will arrive Sunday, the second one on Monday. They will meet the Kenyan team  starting the search on Tuesday,” government spokesperson Cyrus Oguna told journalists on Sunday.

The number of divers was not immediately established.

Wambua said he hopes they will help relieve the family of their pain.

Oguna said they have isolated four locations where they believe the wreckage and the bodies might be found.

“Today, we have marked two of the locations where we will concentrate our efforts. However, the areas are so deep and divers can’t stay at that depth for more than six minutes,” Oguna said. Otherwise, they develop the bends.

This means it would take the whole day to cover one of the two locations, further diminishing the hopes of recovery.

“Patience is key,” he said.

“Even though those rituals are things of the past, let everyone be given a chance to practise their expertise,” Mombasa Council of Elders chairman Mohamed Jahazi told the Star on Sunday.

“Do those catching fish in the sea slaughter animals first? It was written that mother and daughter would die that day. The ferry accident was just a cause for it to happen,” said Sheikh Ngao

Recovery seems to be failing and alternatives must be tried, the former Mvita MP said. Jahazi served as an assistant health minister in President Daniel Moi’s regime.

Kenya Muslim National Advisory Council chair Sheikh Juma Ngao said he opposed calls for rituals to be performed at the crossing channel, saying they violate Islamic teachings.

“It is haram and it is against the teachings of Islam,” he said.

“One is supposed to pray to Allah directly. He listens to everyone and does not want to be bribed to grant prayers,” he said.

He said many things are found in the sea without sacrificing any animals.

“Do those catching fish in the sea slaughter animals first? It was written that mother and daughter would die that day. The ferry accident was just a cause for it to happen,” Sheikh Ngao said.

He said the government and the KFS have failed the family and Kenyans.

“Let people pray normally without slaughtering any animal to appease any sea god,” he said.

A renowned Swedish diver has said that he can use 15 mins only to locate the car and two bodies submerged in the Likoni Channel following the Sunday evening ferry tragedy.

The diver says that after locating the car, he can take two hours to retrieve them, all for free provided that he brings his own boat.

He says that he has assessed the situation at the Likoni channel and that he will bring his own machine and collaborate with Kenya Navy divers to retrieve the bodies.

Renowned Swedish diver says he can use 15 mins to locate the car submerged in the Likoni Channel and take 2 hours to retrieve them, all for free provided he brings his own boat #KTNNewsDesk pic.twitter.com/Ifn8D76sgz

— ktn (@KTNKenya) October 3, 2019

He says he can took to work tomorrow(Friday) morning if he is allowed to go on with the operation.

Hopes of retrieving bodies of Mariam Kigenda and her 4-year-old daughter, Amanda Mutheu, who were aboard a vehicle that plunged into the sea on Sunday, were further thwarted on Wednesday after search operations failed to bear fruit for the fourth day in a row. 

This as the government dispatched Transport Principal Secretary Esther Koimett to coordinate the recovery operation which has turned out to be some sort of a “trial and error mission”.

Engineers from Chinese firm handling the Kipevu Oil Terminal project brought in their underwater cameras and scanned through a dark sandy underwater with absolutely poor visibility. 

The images captured underwater painted a picture of “trial and error” even though the government agencies insisted they were optimistic about recovery. 

On Monday, the government barred a private diver that had been hired by the victims’ family to retrieve bodies, saying that he was feeding the family with wrong information. Will the swedish diver be allowed to do the operation?

Up to now, the bodies and the car have not been retrieved. The operation is still going on.

Hopes of retrieving bodies of Mariam Kigenda and her 4-year-old daughter, Amanda Mutheu, who were aboard a vehicle that plunged into the sea on Sunday, were further thwarted on Wednesday after search operations failed to bear fruit for the fourth day in a row. 

This as the government dispatched Transport Principal Secretary Esther Koimett to coordinate the recovery operation which has turned out to be some sort of a “trial and error mission”.

Engineers from Chinese firm handling the Kipevu Oil Terminal project brought in their underwater cameras and scanned through a dark sandy underwater with absolutely poor visibility. 

The images captured underwater painted a picture of “trial and error” even though the government agencies insisted they were optimistic about recovery. 

Koimett, who addressed media on Wednesday evening, said there were no positive results for the search mission in five out of 14 spots which were earlier suspected to be possible locations where the bodies and vehicle wreckage could be found.

She assured that the government has set up a command centre to coordinate and share information with public even as anger among Kenyans and despair among family and friends continued to mount at the recovery scene.

“The government is committed to the recovery exercise, we want to retrieve the bodies and the vehicle wreckage as soon as possible,” she said.

Koimett observed that powerful ocean currents coupled with poor visibility beneath the ocean was hindering the search operation. 

“Underwater search is not an ordinary operation. There is darkness beneath the waters, the current is strong, the terrain below is also hilly and there are also valleys… At the same time this channel is busy. So, the exercise is a tricky one,” she said.

Earlier, government spokesman Col. Cyrus Oguna said that the recovery exercise is delicate and could take more time. 

“Aerial photos taken by plane detected metals in 14 possible areas where we were expecting to find the bodies plus the wreckage… However, there was nothing found in five of the locations. We have therefore narrowed down the search to a smaller area of nine locations where we believe the bodies could be located, ” Oguna said. 

Oguna called for patience saying due to the poor visibility, robots are being used to locate the bodies and the car. 

“The divers are not relying on their vision, they are relying on touch and it is on that touch they can be able to interpret if what they are touching is a vehicle. The robots direct them where to touch and go,” said Oguna

Remarks by the two were in clear contradiction with Kenya Ferry Services (KFS) Managing Director, Bakari Gowa, who on Tuesday reported that the bodies and the wreckage had been located at two points underwater. 

In his press briefing on Tuesday, Gowa said the bodies and wreckage were detected in two spots at 75 feet and 173 feet which were the search focus. 

The search mission is being conducted by a team of divers and spotters from Kenya Navy, Kenya Marine and Fisheries Research Institute, Kenya Ports Authority as well as local divers hired by the bereaved family.

But on Wednesday, tension rocked the search mission after government authorities ordered privately commissioned divers- Kenya Rescue Divers under Musa Sila – to withdraw from the search for unknown reasons.  

This is after the private divers hired by the family told media they had not located the car nor the bodies.

However, KFS Chairman, Dan Mwazo, intervened to allow the divers continue with the mission. 

Kenya Navy and KPA teams are coordinating the operation by use of underwater camera enabled robots which are immersed in water to capture the underwater world in an operation which is monitored via a laptop screen by spotters in a motorboat afloat.

On Wednesday, the search mission was suspended shortly before midday as divers allowed waters to calm before resuming again at around 3.00pm.

KFS cleared the channel in the morning and evening hours to give the divers room for clear visibility.

Col. Lawrence Gituma, who is leading the Kenya Navy divers in the operation, said sea traffic at the channel will continue to be interrupted until the exercise is over.

Mombasa Governor Hassan Joho, who visited the scene of the accident for the first time on four days, was booed as tried to address hundreds of residents who pitched camp at the scene.

I have sent for experts from South Africa to join efforts with multi agency teams that are working round the clock to retrieve the bodies. #LikoniFerry #LikoniFerryTragedy pic.twitter.com/O5ZaeeQ6RE

— Governor Hassan Joho (@HassanAliJoho) October 2, 2019

The governor, who remained silent since the incident happened, asked government agencies to hasten the operation. 

“We understand that the complexity of the search operations is the reason for the delay, and, therefore, we are asking for patience. We are part of the multi-agency team involved in the search operations,” Joho said. 

Haki Africa executive director, Hussein Khalid, said the poor recovery exercise was an indictment on the side of the government as it shows lack on preparedness in disaster management.

The government has been forced to source for diving equipment from a South African company to help undertake the operation to retrieve two bodies and a car that slithered off the ferry plunging into Indian Ocean on Sunday evening.

Coast Regional Coordinator John Elungata on Monday said the operation will continue on Tuesday.

The regional administrator said operation to retrieve bodies of a woman and her daughter from Indian Ocean was delayed over lack of equipment to pull out the car from the Indian Ocean.

Mariam Kigenda Taita, 35, and her four-year-old daughter died after the vehicle they were traveling in slid off MV Harambee Sunday evening.

#LikoniFerry accident is so painful
Atleast they could have done something
R.I.P to the victims @ItsMutai @Chepkut_William @danielmarven @EmmanuelSunday_ pic.twitter.com/QmoWikYicH

— Reuben §afèty (@SafetyReuben) October 1, 2019

The family’s relatives, including Mariam’s husband on Monday camped at the Likoni channel as they waited in vain for KFS to retrieve the bodies of their kin.

Frustrated, the faulted the government for not doing enough especially since in navy officers could be seen nearby conducting drills.

Private divers – who have previously played a key role in rescue and retrieval efforts – refused to participate in the exercise, citing non-payment for previous work.