Six days after the car deck of the Italian ferry Norman Atlantic caught fire in the Adriatic there are still many people missing, including nine Greeks whose names were published yesterday on the site of the Greek coastguard.

Italian and Greek search efforts have been ongoing, however there is still a great deal of confusion regarding the number of missing passengers and there are fears that the details are not accurate.

Tormented by fear for the lives of their loved ones, the families of the nine missing Greeks have decided to take matters into their own hands and travel to Italy, in an attempt to clarify the situation.

According to the son of Nikolaos Sagiridis, one of the Greeks included in the coastguard’s list, the families of the missing people have been subjected to a horrible emotional ordeal. “It’s an emotional roller coaster. One moment they say my father is on the list, the next moment they say he is not!”

Mr. Sagiridis spoke on the phone with his father, a truck driver from Thessaloniki, at around dawn on Sunday, when the fire had already broken out on board. “We are burning, my boy,” the unfortunate man told his son in their last communication.

The relatives of the nine missing Greeks have decided to travel to Italy and visit themselves the hospitals in Bari, Lecce and other smaller cities, in an attempt to find out what happened to their loved ones. The main reason behind this decision is that they have been informed that seriously injured people, whose identity has not been established, are treated in those hospitals, Mr. Sagiridis says.

According to the site of the Coast Guard, the nine missing Greeks are:

1. ALEXANDROS KOUFOGIORGIS
2. IOANNIS SYMEONIDIS
3. VASILIS TSAMIS
4. APOSTOLOS NIKOLARAS
5. GERASIMOS KAZANTZIDIS
6. NIKOLAOS SAGIRIDIS
7. GEORGIOS PAPADOPOULOS
8. EVANGELOS PAPAVANGELIS
9. IOANNIS SOFOS