CNN
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Rescue workers in southern Italy are still searching for six missing people after a tornado sank a luxury yacht early Monday, prompting an air and naval operation off the coast of Sicily.
According to the Italian coast guard, 15 people were rescued from the wreck on Monday. A body was later recovered from the hull of the damaged ship.
Among the missing are two Americans and four Britons – including British technology magnate Mike Lynch, Jonathan Bloomer, chairman of Morgan Stanley International, and Chris Morvillo, a prominent lawyer.
Here’s what we know:
A small waterspout – a type of tornado – swirled over the Mediterranean island early Monday, likely causing the sailboat to capsize amid heavy rains and severe thunderstorms.
The British-flagged yacht, named Bayesian, was anchored about half a mile from the port of Porticello on Sicily’s northern coast. The vessel sank after its mast broke in half in the storm, Salvatore Cocina, head of Sicilian civil protection, told CNN on Tuesday.
Eyewitnesses reported violent storms and hurricane-force winds that left an avalanche of debris near the pier.
More than a dozen survivors were seen in the area clinging to life rafts, according to the captain of a nearby boat who was stabilizing his vessel to avoid a collision with the Bayesian.
“We had this strong hurricane gust and had to start the engine to keep the ship at an angle,” Karsten Bower told reporters in Palermo on Monday. “After the storm passed, we noticed that the ship had disappeared behind us.”
Bower and his crew rescued four injured people, he said, before calling the Italian coast guard, which later rescued the remaining survivors.
One of the rescued people – a child – was flown by helicopter to the children’s hospital in Palermo. According to the mayor’s office, a total of eight people were hospitalized.
The girl’s mother, Charlotte, described struggling to hold on to her one-year-old daughter, Sofia, Italian news agency ANSA reported.
“Within two seconds I lost the baby in the sea, then immediately hugged him again, amidst the angry waves. I held him tight, close to me, while the sea was stormy,” she told reporters. “Many were screaming.”
According to a doctor at the local children’s hospital in Palermo, mother and daughter were later reunited with their father, James.
“The survivors are very tired and are constantly asking about the missing,” said doctor Domenico Cipolla on Monday. “They are talking and crying all the time because they have realized that there is little hope of finding their friends alive.”
The Italian fire service sent helicopters to assist in the search, officials said Monday. The fire service also announced it would send divers to enter the sunken ship on Tuesday after an attempt on Monday was unsuccessful.
Due to the depth of the wreck, divers can only work there for a limited time, said Marco Tilotta, inspector of the diving unit of the local Palermo fire department. The Italian fire department said on Monday that its divers had reached the yacht’s hull 49 meters below sea level.
Britain’s Marine Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB) will also send a team of four inspectors to Palermo to make a preliminary assessment of the accident scene, a source familiar with the matter told CNN on condition of anonymity.
There were 22 people on board the Bayesian, which was sailing under the British flag and had mainly British passengers and crew, as well as two Anglo-French nationals, an Irishman and a Sri Lankan, an Italian coast guard spokesman told CNN.
The missing people include a group of high-profile guests, including Lynch, the 59-year-old British technology investor who was fighting a fraud case in the US earlier this year. The trigger was the disastrous sale of his company for eleven billion dollars to the technology group Hewlett-Packard (HP) in 2011.
His 18-year-old daughter is also missing. Lynch’s wife, Angela Bacares, survived the accident. Bacares told the Italian daily La Repubblica that she woke up at 4 a.m. local time when the boat tipped over. She and her husband were not alarmed at first, she said, but when the yacht’s windows shattered and chaos broke out, they became concerned.
Bacares spoke to the newspaper while sitting in a wheelchair at a hospital in the Sicilian town of Termini Imerese. She had abrasions on her feet and bandages on other parts of her body, the newspaper said.
According to Salvatore Cocina, the head of the Sicilian civil protection, the financial magnate Bloomer and the well-known lawyer Morvillo as well as their two wives are also among the missing.
Morvillo, an American partner at Clifford Chance, was involved in the successful dismissal of the US fraud case against Lynch in June. Another associate at the firm, Ayla Ronald, and her partner survived the incident, a Clifford Chance spokesman said.
The 56-meter-long yacht was built in 2008 by the Italian company Perini Navi, Reuters reported. According to the Associated Press, the boat can be chartered for $215,000 (195,000 euros) per week.
Lynch’s wife is linked to the yacht. The Bayesian yacht is owned by Revtom Limited, according to records from maritime information service Equasis. The company’s most recent annual report, dated April, lists Bacares as the owner.
According to Reuters, the name of the ship is related to the statistical theory on which Lynch built his fortune.
The yacht’s mast rose 72.27 metres (237 feet) above the designed waterline, just short of the world’s tallest mast, which measures 75.2 metres, according to Guinness World Records. It was the world’s tallest aluminium mast, according to Perini Navi’s website.
Perini Navi is known for producing “high-quality boats,” said Caroline White, deputy editor of BOAT International, a media group for the superyacht industry.
White told CNN that the Bayesian rig “should theoretically become more stable when it is dismasted.” “But it might be different if you’re in the middle of a violent storm with incredibly strong winds pinning you down on the water,” she added.
Strong storms brought torrential rain to Sicily late on Sunday. Initial reports suggest that a small waterspout that formed over the area on Monday morning may have been responsible for the yacht’s sinking.
Waterspouts – one of several types of tornadoes – are rotating columns of air that form over water or move from land into the water. They are often accompanied by strong winds, high seas, hail and dangerous lightning. They are most common over tropical oceans, but can form almost anywhere.
Waterspouts rely on warm water to generate energy, and the Mediterranean has been very hot. Last week, a record daily average of 28.9 degrees Celsius (84 Fahrenheit) was reached, according to preliminary data from researchers at the Spanish Institute of Marine Sciences.
Local temperatures were even higher, with sea temperatures around Sicily reaching nearly 30 degrees Celsius (86 Fahrenheit), nearly 3 degrees higher than normal, Italian climatologist Luca Mercalli told CNN.
“Warmer oceans can release more energy and moisture into the atmosphere, the main fuels for storms,” he said.
