Indonesian rescuers widen search for missing after ferry sinks
The ferry carrying at least 65 people, including passengers and crew, was making a 5km crossing from eastern Java island to Bali when it tilted and sank in bad weather late Wednesday, witnesses and officials said.
As of Friday morning, 30 people were still missing after 29 were plucked from the water to safety.
Rescue officials said one of the six found dead was a three-year-old boy.
Rescuers deployed assets to carry out searches by sea and air on Friday, widening their efforts along the coastlines of eastern Java and Bali, national search and rescue agency operations official Ribut Eko Suyatno told reporters.
"The land search rescue unit ... we ask to comb through the Ketapang beach from north to south. Also likewise for Gilimanuk," he said.
The ferry passage from Java's Ketapang port to Gilimanuk port on Bali – one of the busiest crossings in the country – takes around one hour and is often used by people travelling between the islands with a car.
Local rescue officials said the KMP Tunu Pratama Jaya vessel sank 25 minutes into its journey.
At least 306 rescuers were deployed Friday for the search effort, the Java-based Surabaya search and rescue agency said.
The search was temporarily halted overnight and resumed around 8am, Friday, in Bali.
Rescuers had deployed inflatable boats, a larger rescue vessel and a helicopter to aid the search on Thursday, made up of dozens of personnel, including navy and police officers.
BAD WEATHER
At least four survivors were found early on Thursday after saving themselves by climbing into the ferry's lifeboat.
Initial search efforts were hampered by bad weather, with waves as high as 2.5 metres (8 feet) and strong winds.
The ferry's manifest showed 53 passengers and 12 crew members but it is common in Indonesia for the actual number of passengers on a boat to differ from that document.
Marine accidents are a regular occurrence in Indonesia, a Southeast Asian archipelago nation 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.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CNA
20 hours ago
- CNA
Sumba, an hour away from Bali, Indonesia is the perfect vacation spot to do absolutely nothing
After a motorbike ride down an empty road, my daughter and I found ourselves jumping off a high wooden platform into a deep lagoon with salt-white sand, healthy coral — and no one else around. As the Indian Ocean splashed, we swam, jumped again and laughed. We lost track of time. Maybe we were just lucky. The platform had to have been built by someone, for the fun of many. But it was neither the first nor last time that we felt practically alone in Sumba. Sumba, one of Indonesia's easternmost islands, is just an hour's flight from Bali. But Sumba is as quiet as Bali is thumping. There are no digital nomads, DJ parties or drones at sunset. The island is twice the size of Bali with one-fifth the population. The airport is a walk-across-the-tarmac affair with one baggage carousel and, on the 40-minute drive to our hotel, we saw maybe a dozen people. Whether Sumba can remain an anti-Bali is a question. It's just starting to reach a tipping point with enough hotel development and word-of-mouth buzz to draw more than just surf-crazy adventurers and celebrities with blank-check budgets. We heard about it from surfer friends in Sydney, and when we planned a trip two months before departure, most of the island's handful of hotels (ranging from US$180, or about S$230, per night, for a double at Sumba Beach House to US$1,300 for the award-winning Nihi Sumba) were booked. Some would argue that means go now. Others will tell you, as they told us, that Sumba can never be Bali for many reasons, from infrastructure to size and local culture, which requires a great deal of community trust-building and approvals before anything gets built. 'There's just not much here,' said Kiri Desborough, the wellness director at Cap Karoso, the hotel where we eventually ended up for a four-night stay, which is privately owned and still feels manageable and intimate. 'It's a very different place.' ROOM TO SPREAD OUT Having come from Bali, we immediately noticed a difference in the landscape. Geologically, Sumba is an Australian continental fragment that drifted north, which means no volcanoes or towering cliffs. It's mostly plains of grass and corn, which serve as animal feed. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Cap Karoso Sumba (@cap_karoso) Space is part of the appeal, and like the other hotels spread across the island, Cap Karoso has made the most of it. The two-year-old property has 44 guest rooms and 20 villas on more than three acres of hilly land that rolls toward Karoso beach. None of the major hotel chains have set up shop on Sumba so Cap Karoso is as big as it gets. The owners are a French couple — Evguenia and Fabrice Ivara, a former luxury goods brand manager and a digital ad agency entrepreneur. Their aesthetic is minimalist, with modernist furniture and airy buildings, featuring plants on the rooftops and lemongrass bushes lining the walkways. We passed the hotel's organic farm on our way to the lobby. Upon arrival, David Garcia, the general manager, welcomed us and explained the hotel's ethos: 'There's a lot to do, or this can be the perfect place to do nothing.' After an around-the-world lunch at the beach club (poke bowl, pizza, bao buns and a club sandwich, for about US$50), my family — myself, my wife and our two teenage children — chose to be active. We went for a surf with the hotel's longboards, which were free to use. It was a bit of a paddle into smallish waves, but the water was crystal clear. The next day we embarked on a snorkelling trip that was included with our room rate. Our guides were chill — they brought spear guns and caught a red snapper for dinner — and there were only a few other boats on the water. Underwater, I've seen a wider array of fish in other places, but in a time of climate change and coral bleaching, the colours and health of the reefs brought a sense of deep relief. Then, after our lagoon adventure, we booked a half-day surf trip, which sent us with a guide around the southwestern tip of Sumba. We bounced down dirt roads through traditional villages with thatched roofs standing several stories high. Officially, Sumba is mostly Christian, but in the ancient animist religion of the island, ancestors or 'marapu' guide the living from above so the traditional homes (and some government buildings) reach for a connection. Waingapu, our destination, sat just beyond a river mouth and a village. There was no one else in the water. The waves were four to five feet, soft, clean and tons of fun for us intermediates — probably the best place we'd ever surfed together as a family. Our guide, Julianto, said he came to Sumba for exactly that kind of experience, after growing up in West Java and working in more crowded places. 'Bali has so many people,' he said. 'I love Sumba because Sumba is still nature.' Garcia told me that 90 per cent of the hotel staff is Sumbanese. Many of them were trained through a partnership with the Sumba Hospitality Foundation, a local nonprofit, and perhaps because tourism is still so new and seems to be delivering local benefits, the relationship of guest, staff and community felt warm and unjaded. Children from a nearby village swam at the edge of the hotel beach, waving, smiling and trying out a little English. When my daughter and I got lost on our way to the lagoon, locals pointed us in the right direction with a smile. A PLACE TO RELAX We managed to do a bit of nothing too. Sunsets by the main pool, which sits slightly higher than the villas, offered amazing views of sky, sea and a lighthouse in the distance. One night, my wife and I signed up for dinner at Julang, Cap Karoso's fine-dining option featuring guest chefs who serve guests at a single long table from an open kitchen. There were only six of us there for a meal from Robbie Noble, a British-raised chef based in Melbourne, Australia. His menu leaned into local seafood, offering chilled crab tea, grilled octopus (with tahini and shallots) and a steamed mahi mahi dish with morning glory, otherwise known as water spinach. We worked through it all with a pair of American expats living in Amsterdam and a British couple who told us about their courtship on a 30,000-mile motorcycle trip from Alaska to Patagonia. Luxury in remoteness can be costly: The prix fixe meal at Julang was around US$90 per person, without wine; doubles at Cap Karoso start at US$325, two-bedroom duplexes at US$750 and three-bedrooms can cost as much as US$4,000 per night. More reasonable options at smaller boutique hotels or homes are available, if you book early. At all of them, you're likely to be on site for most meals and activities since other development is sparse (though the kitchen staff did mention a karaoke bar near the airport). Sumba's balance at the moment, with nature, its staff and food offerings like freshly baked pastries every morning, feels extravagant and fragile. As always, the rich-visitor poor-local divide risks distorting the culture of a place that has persisted, largely unchanged, for hundreds if not thousands of years. At the lagoon, for example, a handful of vendors have set up stalls to sell local crafts and when we left, a few men and boys competed for who should be paid a small parking fee. But compared to Bali — or much of Thailand, or Fiji, or so many other places — Sumba still feels like a secret getaway, a place to clear the mind, enjoy the breezes and the sea, and most of all, avoid the crowds. 'We don't have the infrastructure for a Four Seasons,' said Desborough, who recently launched a seven-day wellness experience, with immersion into the nature, community and shamanic practices of the island. 'And to be honest, we're OK with that.'
CNA
3 days ago
- CNA
Indonesian rescuers widen search for missing after ferry sinks
GILIMANUK, Indonesia: Hundreds of Indonesian rescuers widened their search for dozens of missing people on Friday (Jul 4) after a ferry sank in rough seas on the way to the resort island of Bali, leaving at least six dead. The ferry carrying at least 65 people, including passengers and crew, was making a 5km crossing from eastern Java island to Bali when it tilted and sank in bad weather late Wednesday, witnesses and officials said. As of Friday morning, 30 people were still missing after 29 were plucked from the water to safety. Rescue officials said one of the six found dead was a three-year-old boy. Rescuers deployed assets to carry out searches by sea and air on Friday, widening their efforts along the coastlines of eastern Java and Bali, national search and rescue agency operations official Ribut Eko Suyatno told reporters. "The land search rescue unit ... we ask to comb through the Ketapang beach from north to south. Also likewise for Gilimanuk," he said. The ferry passage from Java's Ketapang port to Gilimanuk port on Bali – one of the busiest crossings in the country – takes around one hour and is often used by people travelling between the islands with a car. Local rescue officials said the KMP Tunu Pratama Jaya vessel sank 25 minutes into its journey. At least 306 rescuers were deployed Friday for the search effort, the Java-based Surabaya search and rescue agency said. The search was temporarily halted overnight and resumed around 8am, Friday, in Bali. Rescuers had deployed inflatable boats, a larger rescue vessel and a helicopter to aid the search on Thursday, made up of dozens of personnel, including navy and police officers. BAD WEATHER At least four survivors were found early on Thursday after saving themselves by climbing into the ferry's lifeboat. Initial search efforts were hampered by bad weather, with waves as high as 2.5 metres (8 feet) and strong winds. The ferry's manifest showed 53 passengers and 12 crew members but it is common in Indonesia for the actual number of passengers on a boat to differ from that document. Marine accidents are a regular occurrence in Indonesia, a Southeast Asian archipelago nation 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.
CNA
3 days ago
- CNA
5 dead, 29 missing after ferry sinks on way to Indonesia's Bali
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.
