The freighter Raptor was bound from Egypt to Istanbul with 14 people aboard when its captain radioed for help over a mechanical problem. It sank off the Greek island of Lesbos on Sunday, in the East Aegean Sea, while a storm pushed rough seas across the area.
The Athens News Agency reported that a Hellenic Navy helicopter plucked one person from the water. The Greek Coast Guard was still searching for the 13 others, in what the agency described as a massive effort.
Storm Bettina
Hellenic Navy officials tied the sinking to the weather. Greek national meteorologists call the low-pressure system Storm Bettina. The Hellenic National Meteorological Center had issued a Code Orange warning of dangerous weather on Friday, as the system approached.
Forecasters expected storms across the whole country, with heavy rain, and snow in the highlands. In the Ionian region, temperatures were due to fall by 8 to 10 degrees by Sunday. Gale warnings covered most of the Aegean Sea, the Black Sea and the Greek coast through Sunday.
Wind forecasts for the weekend reached 9 or 10 on the Beaufort scale in the Black Sea, and 7 or 8 in the Aegean. The National Weather Service says force 9 brings high waves, winds up to 54 mph and poor visibility at sea.
Conditions were forecast to ease in Greece on Sunday as the storm moved into the northwest Black Sea toward Libya. The same system was producing weather warnings across Eastern Europe, and blizzard conditions in Romania and Ukraine.
Naming the storms
Greece names its windstorms the way the National Hurricane Center names hurricanes, using lists set by region. The country belongs to the Eastern Mediterranean Group, along with Cyprus and Israel.
Bettina came after a deadlier system in September. That one, called Storm Daniel, dropped historic amounts of rain across the Mediterranean, including more than 30 inches in Greece.
