At least five people are dead and 86 remain unaccounted for after a passenger ferry caught fire off the Philippine island of Coron, a popular diving and tourism destination in Palawan province, authorities said Thursday.
The vessel, MV June Aster, was carrying 134 people, 117 passengers and 17 crew, when an explosion tore through its cargo hold on Wednesday evening, according to survivor accounts cited by local media. Thick smoke and flames quickly engulfed the roll-on roll-off ferry about 2.2 kilometers offshore.
Forty-three people, including four crew members, have been pulled from the water alive. Rescue teams reached the scene within about 10 minutes of the distress call, the Philippine Coast Guard said, but the fire’s intensity has slowed efforts to search the ship itself.
‘They might suffocate’
Philippine Coast Guard spokesperson Commodore Noemie Cayabyab said crews had not been able to board the burning vessel even a day after the blaze began.
“We cannot force our rescue teams to board the ship because they might suffocate,” Cayabyab said, according to Philstar. She cautioned that casualty figures remained fluid given the ongoing search.
The ferry had departed Manila on Tuesday night bound for Coron, with arrival expected Wednesday evening. It was loaded with motorcycles, an electric car, a forklift, a pickup van, and cargo including rice and eggs, cargo that may have fed the fire once it started in the hold, according to reporting by Philstar and Al Jazeera.
The Maritime Industry Authority has deployed investigators to determine the cause of the explosion, and the vessel’s owner, Atienza Interisland Ferries Inc., said it was mobilizing resources to assist survivors and families of the missing.
A recurring danger
Ferry disasters are a grim and recurring feature of travel in the Philippines, an archipelago of more than 7,000 islands where sea travel remains the primary way to move people and goods between provinces.
In January, the MV Trisha Kerstin 3 sank with more than 340 people aboard, killing at least 52. In 2023, a fire aboard the Lady Mary Joy 3 killed 31 people on nearly the same Manila-to-Palawan route now linked to the June Aster tragedy.
Investigators and safety advocates have repeatedly pointed to overcrowding, aging vessels, inconsistent enforcement of maritime safety codes, and the mixing of passengers with flammable cargo as recurring factors in Philippine ferry disasters. The June Aster’s manifest, which included an electric vehicle and machinery alongside passengers, is likely to draw scrutiny once investigators examine what triggered the hold explosion.
Coron sits in the Calamian Islands, a cluster prized for its lagoons, shipwreck diving sites, and coral reefs, and the route between Manila and Palawan carries heavy passenger traffic from both domestic travelers and tourists during peak season.
Why it matters beyond the headline
Maritime safety failures like this one are not unique to Southeast Asia. Pakistan has its own history of ferry and boat disasters, particularly on the Indus River and in coastal areas of Sindh and Balochistan, often tied to the same combination of overcrowding and weak enforcement seen in the Philippines.
The scale of Wednesday’s fire, with dozens still missing more than a day later, underscores how quickly a single onboard fire can turn catastrophic when a vessel is carrying both passengers and combustible cargo far from shore. International maritime safety bodies have long pushed for stricter separation of passenger and cargo areas on ro-ro ferries, a design already implicated in several major disasters worldwide, including some in South Asian waters.
The Philippine government has faced criticism after previous ferry disasters for slow implementation of safety reforms recommended by its own maritime authority. Whether the June Aster fire prompts new enforcement measures, or is treated as an isolated tragedy, will likely shape how the death toll and missing count are ultimately resolved and whether accountability follows.
Search and rescue operations were continuing as of Thursday, with coast guard vessels and aircraft combing waters around Coron for survivors and remains. Families of those aboard have gathered at ports in Manila and Coron awaiting updates, according to local reports.
Rescue effort complicated by smoke and cargo
More than 24 hours after the fire broke out, thick smoke was still pouring from the June Aster as of Thursday afternoon, coast guard officials said, preventing rescue teams from boarding to search cabins and cargo decks directly. Crews have instead relied on nearby fishing boats, coast guard cutters, and aerial searches to look for survivors in the water and along nearby shorelines.
The presence of a forklift, a pickup van, and an electric vehicle among the cargo has complicated firefighting efforts, since vehicle batteries and fuel tanks can reignite even after flames appear contained. Investigators have not yet said whether the electric car played any role in igniting or sustaining the blaze.
Philippine officials have not released the nationalities of those aboard, though the Manila-to-Coron route is heavily used by both Filipino residents of Palawan and foreign tourists visiting the province’s beaches and dive sites. Coron’s economy depends heavily on sea-based tourism, and the timing of the disaster, during a peak travel period, raises the likelihood that visitors from multiple countries are among the missing.
The Department of Transportation has ordered an immediate review of the ferry’s safety certification and maintenance records, according to Philippine media, a step that typically follows major maritime incidents in the country but has historically produced uneven results in preventing repeat disasters.
