Salvatore Cocina, director general of Sicily’s civil protection agency, confirmed to the BBC that Mike Lynch, his daughter Hannah Lynch and Bayes chef Ricardo Thomas were among the missing. It is believed that the businessman’s daughter Hana was 18 years old.
The rescue operation will continue through the night as a rescue diving team has arrived from Rome.
Technology entrepreneur M. Lynch is among those missing after a superyacht with 22 people on board sank during a strong storm off the coast of Sicily, a British newspaper reported.
Mr. Lynch, 59, known as the founder of Autonomy Corporation, is one of four Britons who are considered missing, while his wife Angela Bacares has been rescued, a source familiar with the situation said.
Two Americans and a Canadian are also missing. Mr. Lynch’s press representative refused to comment on the situation.
Fifteen people, including a one-year-old child, were rescued from the 56-meter sailboat Bayesian by Coast Guard patrol boats and firefighters.
One body was found not far from the wreck, but six other people were missing, said Luca Cari, a spokesman for Italy’s fire and rescue service.
A spokesman for the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) said: “Following the incident in Sicily, we are liaising with the local authorities and are ready to provide consular assistance to British nationals affected.”
In the mid-1980s, Mr. Lynch co-founded software company Autonomy, which became one of the luminaries of the UK tech scene.
For services to business in 2006 he was awarded the Order of the British Empire (OBE), and in 2011 appointed to then Prime Minister David Cameron’s Science and Technology Council. in 2008 he was elected a member of the Royal Academy of Engineering, and in 2014 – Member of the Royal Society.
According to Forbes and The Standard, Mr. Lynch’s assets exceed 1 billion. US dollars.
In recent months, Mr. Lynch, who has been called the “British Bill Gates,” has made headlines in recent months because of a high-profile fraud case.
In a US trial in June this year, he was acquitted of all 15 fraud charges he faced in 2011. Hewlett-Packard acquires Autonomy for $11.1 billion dollars.
The trial began in March in San Francisco after a long battle over his extradition from England to the United States. He was first indicted in 2018, accusing him of inflating sales, misleading regulators and defrauding a potential buyer.
After his acquittal, he told reporters: “I can’t wait to get back to the UK and get back to what I love most: my family and innovating in my field.”
“All I could hear around me were other people’s shouts”
The Italian Coast Guard said in a statement: “This morning around 5:00 a.m. The British-flagged yacht Bayesian, a 56-metre yacht, sank near Porticle in the early hours of this morning in a severe storm.”The yacht had a crew of 10 and 12 passengers, she added.
Rescue divers are trying to reach the hull, which sank at a depth of about 49 meters. The incident is being investigated by the Termini Imerese Prosecutor’s Office.
Eight of those rescued, including a one-year-old child, were taken to local hospitals and are all in stable condition.
Doctors at Palermo Di Cristina Hospital reported that the child’s mother “held her daughter on the water with all her strength, with her arms up to prevent her from drowning.”
“It was dark everywhere,” the woman, a British citizen named Charlotte, told doctors. – I couldn’t keep my eyes in the water. I screamed for help, but all I could hear around me was other people’s screams.”
The Coast Guard stated that the yacht in 2008 built by the Italian shipbuilder Perini. The luxury vessel has an aluminum hull, can reach a top speed of 15 knots, and can accommodate 12 guests and a crew of up to 10, according to specialized online yachting websites.
The vessel left the Sicilian port of Milazzo on August 14 and was last seen east of Palermo on Sunday evening, with a navigational status of “at anchor”, according to the tracking app Vesselfinder.
There were reports in the local media that the ship was affected by the water element. A water eddy, roughly resembling a small tornado, is a plume descending from a cloud that forms a swirling mixture of wind and water over a body of water.
Some fishermen reported about 3:55 a.m. after spotting a small tornado off the coast. Soon after, they witnessed a distress flare allegedly being fired from the ship. The fishermen came closer, but said they only saw “scattered remains of the sailboat floating in the water.”
Storms and heavy rains have lashed Italy in recent days, and floods and landslides have caused extensive damage in the north of the country after weeks of heat.
It sank within minutes
The captain of the yacht that rescued the people who survived the disaster, Karsten Borner, told how the storm started.
He told Italian news agency Rai that the superyacht tipped on its side and sank “within minutes”.
“Everything happened in a very short time,” he said.
The crew of the Dutch-flagged ship was the first to rush to rescue the people on the yacht.
Borner said he turned on the engine during the storm to maintain control of the ship and avoid a collision with the Bayesian.
“We managed to maintain the position of the ship and after the storm passed we noticed that the ship behind us had disappeared,” he told Reuters.
Divers continue the search
Deep divers are searching the water, but so far they have not found any of the six people missing after the yacht sank, Italian journalist Angela Corrias informed the British channel Sky News.
The journalist said that according to eyewitness accounts, the yacht was moored right next to the port.
“It wouldn’t have taken them long to sail to port, but suddenly they were hit by a tornado and it seems to have broken the mast of the sail, causing the yacht to capsize,” she said.
Describing the location where the yacht was anchored, she said the harbor was “quite popular” and it was “the height of the season”.
“Witnesses say that it seems that there was a party there, and around 4:30 a.m. in the morning they could still see the yacht and suddenly it disappeared,” she said.
The reporter added that deep divers are underwater, but “they haven’t pulled anything out yet.”
Parengta pagal „The Guardian“ ir „Sky News“ inf.
2024-08-20 14:50:22