Tragedy on the water

Of the 196 people on board the cruise ship "Bulgaria", which was traveling from the city of Bolgar to Kazan and sank on the Volga on July 10, 79 were rescued (according to other sources - 85), about 110 died. All survivors survived, 14 of them were hospitalized, now six remain in hospitals. It was mainly those who were picked up by passing ships who managed to escape - however, not all ships stopped: as the Tatar-inform agency reports from the words of one of the survivors, some people were on the inflatable raft for one and a half to two hours, and two The ships passing by - an oil tanker and a barge - did not react to them in any way and did not stop. Most were picked up by the motor ship Arabella, three people were picked up by the Meteor. On the day of the crash, they managed to catch the body of one victim; later divers found about 110 bodies in the interior of the sunken ship. Among the dead were at least 30 children - most of the children on board were in the music salon at an event organized for them and did not have time to get out of there. Among the survivors there was only one child, a five-year-old boy Adele, his relatives died.

Those rescued claim that the Bulgaria sank in about two to three minutes. The team didn’t even have time to launch the boats; only two inflatable rafts opened. At that moment there was a thunderstorm on the Volga. Many surviving passengers blame the cruise organizers for the tragedy. According to one of the passengers, Anna, quoted by Life News, the cruise should have been canceled altogether due to stormy weather. The crash occurred when the captain tried to make a U-turn in the most difficult place to navigate on the Volga. “Bulgaria” was an old ship, in addition, according to some reports, one of its two engines was broken (the head of Tatarstan, Rustam Minnikhanov, informed the relatives of the passengers about this), and this is now called the main cause of the tragedy. On Internet forums, people who had sailed on this ship before talk about how portholes leaked during cruises, electricity repeatedly failed, the engine stalled, and there was a threat of a crash. In addition, it is alleged that the ship was overcrowded: among those on board were unregistered persons. Most of the passengers were not insured - insurance was not included in the ticket price.

July 12 has been declared throughout Russia as a day of mourning for those killed in the crash of the Bulgaria.