5 dead, 29 missing after ferry sinks on way to Indonesia's Bali

CNA

a day ago

DENPASAR: At least five people were dead and dozens unaccounted for on Thursday (Jul 3) after a ferry sank on its way to the resort island of Bali, according to local authorities who said 31 survivors had been plucked from the water so far.
Rescuers were racing to find the 29 people still missing at sea after the KMP Tunu Pratama Jaya sank after leaving East Java province's Banyuwangi port late on Wednesday.
According to Indonesia's search and rescue agency, BASARNAS, the ship sank at around 11.20pm local time, about 25 minutes after setting off.
The boat was carrying 53 passengers and 12 crew members, as well as 22 vehicles.
There has been no official statement on the nationalities of the passengers, but a manifest list broadcast by news channel MetroTV indicated there were no foreigners on board.
"The ferry tilted and immediately sank," survivor Eka Toniansyah told reporters at a Bali hospital.
"Most of the passengers were from Indonesia. I was with my father. My father is dead."
Another survivor, Supardi, recounted how water rushed into the ship.
'When the ferry started to tilt, I initially intended to jump into the sea, but the ship quickly sank, so I did not jump any more but sank with the water entering the ship, maybe about 7m deep, so I immediately climbed up to the top,' the 64-year-old said.
Java-based Surabaya search and rescue agency head Nanang Sigit told AFP that a fifth victim was found dead on Thursday afternoon.
"Thirty-one victims were found safe, five died, 29 people are still being searched for," Nanang said.
President Prabowo Subianto, who was on a trip to Saudi Arabia, ordered an immediate emergency response, Cabinet secretary Teddy Indra Wijaya said in a statement Thursday, adding the cause of the accident was "bad weather".
Nanang said earlier on Thursday that efforts to reach the boat were initially hampered by adverse weather conditions that have since cleared up.
Waves as high as 2.5m with "strong winds and strong currents" had affected the rescue operation, he said.
A rescue team of at least 54 personnel, including those from the navy and police, were dispatched along with inflatable rescue boats, while a bigger vessel was later sent from Surabaya city to assist the search efforts.
Indonesia's national search and rescue agency chief Mohammad Syafii told a news conference that the agency sent a helicopter to help the effort.
FOLLOWING CURRENTS
Nanang said rescuers would follow currents and expand the search area if there were still unaccounted for people by the end of the day.
"For today's search, we are still focusing on search above the water where initial victims were found," the Surabaya search and rescue chief said.
The ferry's manifest showed 53 passengers and 12 crew members, he said, but rescuers were still assessing if there were more people onboard.
It is common in Indonesia for the actual number of passengers on a boat to differ from the manifest.
The ferry crossing from Ketapang port in Java's Banyuwangi regency to Bali's Gilimanuk port - one of the busiest in Indonesia - is around 5km as the crow flies and takes around one hour.
It is often used by people crossing between the islands by car.
Four of the known survivors saved themselves by using the ferry's lifeboat and were found in the water early on Thursday, the rescue agency said.
Marine accidents are a regular occurrence in Indonesia, a Southeast Asian archipelago of around 17,000 islands, in part due to lax safety standards and sometimes due to bad weather.
In March, a boat carrying 16 people capsized in rough waters off Bali, killing an Australian woman and injuring at least one other person.
A ferry carrying more than 800 people ran aground in shallow waters off East Nusa Tenggara province in 2022 and remained stuck for two days before being dislodged with no one hurt.
And in 2018, more than 150 people drowned when a ferry sank in one of the world's deepest lakes on Sumatra island.