APD | Hundreds of passengers evacuated from in Indonesia’s Java Sea ferry inferno

**By APD writer Aditya Nugraha **

JAKARTA, Aug. 24 (APD) - Indonesian rescuers and police have evacuated 300 people and 3 bodies from a ferry which caught by fire in waters around Java Sea’s Masalembu Islands as search for the possible missing ones is underway at present, an Indonesian search agency spokesperson said on Saturday.

The number of those evacuated from the blazed Santika Nusantara ferry was far from 111 mentioned in the ferry’s manifest.

The ferry was caught by fire during its trip service to East Kalimantan city of Balikpapan from East Java capital of Surabaya on Thursday night.

Different from the search agency, according to the police four bodies have been found in wreckage of the ferry. Those bodies were evacuate to Masalembu islands.

“If new updated data comes up, we will immediately inform it. Regarding the manifest data, it can be queried to the seaport administration office,” Surabaya Search and Rescue (SAR) Spokesperson Tholeb Valetehan said in a statement.

Bodies and the surviving passengers and crews were evacuated to Maselembu Islands and Sumenep in East Java province’s island of Madura, he said.

Indonesian authorities have yet to reveal the missing ones in the sea transport incident so far. Further search around the ferry wreckage, however, was still underway at present to find possible victims plunged to the sea, he added.

Fire in the ferry was noticed on Thursday night that made passengers and crews panic but could not do anything until the morning as the incident location was far from nowhere.

Intensive efforts to evacuate those onboard the ferry was conducted on Friday after backup ships arrived in the location from Surabaya and Balikpapan in the morning.

Ferry is essential transport in the world’s largest archipelago country of Indonesia.

Masalembu waters saw a tragic inferno of Tampomas II ferry in January 1981 during its trip service from Jakarta to Sulawesi Island that killed at least 430 ones. Searchers only found 143 bodies while the remaining ones missing and assumed dead. Over 750 ones were rescued from the incident.

(ASIA PACIFIC DAILY)