Rescuers board the burned MV June Aster as 84 remain missing off Coron

Philippine Coast Guard crews boarded the MV June Aster on Friday morning, more than 40 hours after fire tore through the passenger ferry on its run from Manila to Coron, Palawan. Five people are confirmed dead. Forty-three have been rescued. Eighty-four remain missing after two passengers listed on the manifest told authorities they never boarded.

The vessel caught fire at 18:45 local time on Wednesday, 9 September, about 1.2 nautical miles northeast of Barangay Marcilla, close to the end of a voyage of more than 20 hours. Coron is a tourist draw in northern Palawan. The ferry was near the last stretch when survivors said they heard explosions from the cargo hold.

Commodore Noemie Cayabyab, the Coast Guard spokeswoman, said thick smoke and heat kept teams off the hull through Thursday. “No matter how we try to push through, high temperatures and toxic smoke remain a severe risk to our personnel,” she told local media. Incomplete combustion produces carbon monoxide at concentrations that can kill a boarding party. By Friday afternoon the plumes had thinned enough for crews to go in.

The numbers on the manifest

The June Aster listed 117 passengers and 17 crew, 134 names in all. One listed passenger missed the departure. Another chose a plane. That cut the actual headcount to 132. Five dead and 43 rescued leave 84 unaccounted for. Earlier briefings had said 86 missing. The two no-shows explain the revision.

Seven of the rescued were taken to hospital on Culion, a neighbouring island with more beds than Coron. Some survivors were not wearing life vests, the Coast Guard said. The ship, built in 2002, had valid safety certificates and passed an enforcement inspection in March. Investigators are now looking at cargo loading, crew drills and gaps in the passenger list.

The Maritime Industry Authority said survivors described two successive explosions inside the vessel before the fire spread. Cargo on board included five motorcycles, an electric vehicle, a forklift and a pickup truck, according to the Coast Guard. The ship’s rated capacity was 330 people, so it was not overloaded by headcount. Weight and stowage in the hold are a separate question.

Search pattern

Cayabyab said the Coast Guard has widened the search box, put one of its largest ships on station, and is broadcasting to other vessels in the area. Divers and nurses are with the teams. A local diver in Coron told the BBC his group is on standby waiting for instructions. Aerial footage on Friday showed a helicopter over a blackened superstructure with light smoke still rising from parts of the hull.

Ferry fires are a recurring file in the Philippine archipelago. Wooden and steel inter-island boats carry people and mixed cargo on long overnight runs. Night water, distance from large hospitals, and the time it takes smoke to clear all work against a full accounting. Families on shore have been waiting since Wednesday night with little more than the manifest and the daily missing count.

The owner said it was devastated and working around the clock. That statement does not answer how fire started in the hold, why some passengers had no vests on, or why two people were listed as aboard when they were not. MARINA and the Coast Guard have opened those lines. Boarding the wreck is the first chance to look at burn patterns rather than rely on survivor memory.

What Friday changes

Until crews stepped onto the deck, the missing number was a sea search. Inside the hull it becomes a recovery problem as well. Heat that blocked entry for a day and a half also cooked compartments where people may have been trapped. The Coast Guard has not said how much of the interior is passable.

Coron will keep drawing tourists. The route from Manila will keep running on other hulls. The June Aster is now a crime-scene-adjacent wreck 2.2 kilometres off a barangay that most passengers would never have heard of when they bought a ticket. The next official number that matters is how many of the 84 are found aboard, how many in the water, and how many are never found.