Indonesia’s emergency teams have located the passenger ship with the deck submerged and the hull floating, whose sinking early Sunday morning leaves at least six dead, 129 missing, and 108 rescued, according to the provisional report published this Monday.
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Aerial images taken by the National Search and Rescue Agency (Basarnas) show the vessel, carrying 243 people (213 passengers and 30 crew members), practically sunk with waves hitting the remains still on the surface.
The ferry ‘Virgo Transport 8’, which was operating the route between the cities of Surabaya – on the island of Java – and Banjarmasin – in the south of Borneo – and which stopped transmitting its position early Sunday morning, was located about 80 nautical miles southwest of the town of Banjarmasin, in the south of the island of Borneo.
At the time the crew issued the emergency alert, the ship was already “listing” and facing “adverse weather conditions,” Basarnas indicated.
Rescuers have recovered six lifeless bodies, while the search and rescue operation is trying to locate 129 missing persons. The heads of the rescue agency in Banjarmasin told EFE that, according to the ship’s registry, all people on board were Indonesian.
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The mission involves 17 ships and five aircraft in a more confined area of the Java Sea, rescuers indicate.
Maritime accidents are common in Indonesia due to poor infrastructure, passenger and cargo overloading, lax enforcement of safety regulations, and adverse weather conditions.
The ship is one of the main means of transportation in the Indonesian archipelago, made up of more than 17,000 islands and with a population of over 270 million inhabitants.
In 2018, more than 150 people drowned when a ferry sank in one of the deepest lakes in the world, on the island of Sumatra, in one of the worst accidents of this type in the country’s recent history.
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