A Toronto-born woman and her family barely survived a Greek ferry fire that killed at least 11 people this week, and now she is telling her terrifying tale.
Natasa Pejcinovski, now safely at home in Corfu, Greece, boarded the Italy-bound Norman Atlantic with her husband and sons, aged 14 and 11, earlier this week.
The family was awakened around 5:30 a.m. local time on the night of the fire by an announcement in Italian, she says.
When they entered the hallway, there was so much smoke that they assumed a fire was close by.
鈥淲e go out to the deck, the whole ship is burning,鈥� she says. 鈥淭here was total panic, people were screaming, people were crying, people were running about, there was no direction, no crew.鈥�
鈥淲e had to find our own life vests,鈥� she adds. 鈥淲e thought this was the end.鈥�
But it didn鈥檛 end there.
As the family waited for a lifeboat, they said what they thought might be their final goodbyes.
鈥淲e were just sitting there hugging each other in the middle of this chaos because there wasn鈥檛 anything we could do.鈥�
At one point the floor directly beneath them went up in flames, and many people waiting for their turns to jump into the lifeboat ran away.
Her family took the opportunity to jump.
They were the last to make it. A woman who they watched try to jump in after them instead fell into the water, where there were 20-metre-high waves.
Pejcinovski was later told that there were four lifeboats and that the others had all been engulfed.
Their lifeboat was tossed around in the sea for three-and-a-half hours before a rescue boat arrived and dangled a rope ladder, she says. She and her two sons made it up the ladder, but the boat broke away before her husband could climb up. For more than an hour, she wasn鈥檛 sure whether he鈥檇 fallen into the sea.
She now says she is grateful to have her family alive, but angry at how the emergency was handled.
鈥淚鈥檓 enraged at the senseless deaths,鈥� she says, 鈥渁nd that (I) and my family were put in this position.鈥�
