Ferry sinking survivors still suffer physical, emotional problems, suit claimsVANCOUVER (CP) - Passengers who survived last year's ferry sinking off the northern B.C. coast have been plagued by emotional and psychological problems, says the lawyer heading a proposed class-action lawsuit against B.C. Ferries and three crew members.
Their troubles include an inability to work, nightmares, flashbacks and anger stemming from the trauma of scrambling off the Queen of the North after it ran aground just after midnight March 22, 2006.
The ferry, carrying 55 passengers and 46 crew, sank less than two hours after striking Gil Island.
Two passengers, Gerald Fossey and Shirley Rosette of Prince George, B.C., apparently never made it off the ship and are presumed drowned.
B.C. Supreme Court Justice David Tysoe began hearing arguments Monday on whether a lawsuit launched by Maria Kotai of Nanaimo, B.C., should be certified as a class action covering the ferry's other passengers and their dependents.
"They were all in the same vessel and they all suffered the same experience and suffered the same categories of trauma," Kotai's lawyer David Hanson said outside court.
"Some of the people have suffered physical injuries but by and large, people have suffered emotional injuries, psychic injuries. . .
"There's a pattern of psychological harm that people consistently experience."
The suit names Crown-owned B.C. Ferries and three crew members - Colin Henthorne, Karl Lilgert and Karen Briker - in charge on the vessel's bridge the night of the sinking.
Hanson said he's seeking damages beyond those allowed by the Marine Liability Act, which by international convention sets a low ceiling for property loss and a $300,000 limit on injury compensation.
"If we can establish recklessness, then we're not bound by that," he said.
The ship did not make a required course change.
Hanson noted the bridge crew on duty that night has been fired after B.C. Ferries completed its internal investigation.
It opens the door to punitive and aggravated damages against the individual crew members, the lawyer said.
Kotai and her husband Alex were taking the Queen of the North from Prince Rupert to Port Hardy on Vancouver Island.
The newly retired couple was moving from Kitimat, in northern British Columbia, to Nanaimo and had all their possessions with them, Hanson told Tysoe.
Hanson said Maria Kotai awoke in the couple's cabin around 12:20 a.m. to hear the ferry scrapping on the rocks of Gil Island.
"My first thought was that the boat was docking," Kotai said in her affidavit.
She described having to brace herself to stop from falling out of her bunk and seconds later hearing alarms sound and crew members calling for passengers to put on their lifejackets.
Passengers were hustled into open lifeboats and covered liferafts that were lowered into the ocean as the listing ship settled in the water.
Crew members repeatedly took head counts, which heightened the sense of doom among passengers, Hanson told Tysoe.
Most had been asleep and were lightly dressed. Those who ended up in the open lifeboats became soaked as rain grew heavier and they awaited rescue from the coast guard ship Sir Wilfrid Laurier or a flotilla of small boats that rushed from the nearby village of Hartley Bay.
Maria Kotai said she wrenched her shoulder holding onto a rope as her lifeboat was lowered. Passenger Clive Seabrook, an off-duty RCMP officer transferring from Prince Rupert to Port Alberni, said he caught his neck in a rope on his liferaft and required continued treatment for the injury.
But Hanson said the physical injuries were relatively minor compared with continuing psychological and emotional problems many of the passengers have experienced.
Besides losing a lifetime of possessions, keepsakes and documents, the Kotais have been unable to enjoy their retirement, he said. The couple suffers from nightmares, sleep problems and nausea.
Alex Kotai has lost interest in life and both Kotai's remain angry that an "unnecessary act of carelessness" destroyed their lives, Hanson told court.
Living on Vancouver Island, they now fear riding on B.C. Ferries, which has isolated the couple from their grandchildren on the mainland.
Seabrook has also battled nightmares, flashbacks and anger but said his police training has helped him cope, said Hanson. But his wife Brandice has a range of emotional problems and depression.
"She suffers from anxiety whenever she sees the B.C. Ferries logo," he said.
Hanson said Dr. Mel Kaushansky, a psychologist and expert in traumatic psychological stress, has determined ferry passengers are displaying symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, which in some cases requires long-term treatment.
Some keep picturing the sinking and hear its sounds such as the air blowing out the ship's windows as she went under, Kaushansky has found.
The psychologist has worked with passengers on a 2001 Air Transat flight that ran out of fuel over the Atlantic Ocean because of a leak and was forced to glide for 20 minutes to an emergency landing in the Azores.
Among the surviving passengers of the ferry sinking, two couples have elected to launch their own lawsuits.
The certification hearing is expected to take two or three days.
© The Canadian Press, 2007
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