Huge waves and driving rain hindered rescuers yesterday as they searched for about 250 people missing and feared dead after a ferry packed with passengers and cargo capsized in a cyclone off Indonesia’s Sulawesi island.
Many passengers were sleeping when the 700 tonne Teratai Prima was struck by tropical cyclone Charlotte before dawn on Sunday while traveling from the western port of Parepare to Samarinda on the Indonesian half of Borneo island, officials and witnesses said. It sank about 50km off the coast of western Sulawesi.
“People were screaming, ‘Help, help!,’” said survivor Sampara Daeng Gassing, 35, who clung to a tire for two hours in the pounding storm but lost his 9-year-old son and father-in-law in the disaster.
“I lost hold of my son and my father-in-law when a big wave hit me,” Gassing said, weeping.
Gassing, who arrived with other survivors in the port of Parepare yesterday, said the ferry had been slammed by 4m waves and that he awoke about 10 minutes before it went down.
The captain — who also survived — was being investigated for allegedly ignoring warnings from the Indonesian weather agency that conditions on the crossing were too dangerous, Transport Minister Jusman Syafi’i Djamal said.
At least 21 people — 18 passengers and three crew members — were rescued from the sea by fishermen before the military launched a search operation at daybreak yesterday, Djamal told reporters in Jakarta.
The rest of the people aboard were missing and feared dead, Djamal said.
About 250 passengers and 17 crew were believed aboard the ship originally, Djamal said.
However, passenger lists for such ferries in Indonesia are typically inaccurate, with tickets frequently sold on board without being properly tallied.
He said about 150 people jumped from the ship before it sank, and that their fate was unknown.
Three warships, an airplane and a helicopter searched waters off Sulawesi’s west coast, but were hampered by driving rain, strong winds and waves of up to 4m, said Colonel Jaka Santosa, who was heading the rescue operation.
The ferry, carrying about 18 tonnes of cargo, radioed that it was “hit by a storm” before it went down, said Nurwahida, a port official. He goes by one name, as is common in Indonesia.
Boats are a major form of transportation in Indonesia, an archipelago of more than 17,000 islands and a population of 235 million. Poor enforcement of safety regulations and overcrowding causes accidents that claim hundreds of lives each year.
In December 2006, a crowded Indonesian ferry broke apart and sank in the Java Sea during a violent storm, killing more than 400 people.
When Shanghai-based designer Guo Qingshan posted a vacation photo on Valentine’s Day and captioned it “Puppy Mountain,” it became a sensation in China and even created a tourist destination. Guo had gone on a hike while visiting his hometown of Yichang in central China’s Hubei Province late last month. When reviewing the photographs, he saw something he had not noticed before: A mountain shaped like a dog’s head rested on the ground next to the Yangtze River, its snout perched at the water’s edge. “It was so magical and cute. I was so excited and happy when I discovered it,” Guo said.
TURNAROUND: The Liberal Party had trailed the Conservatives by a wide margin, but that was before Trump threatened to make Canada the US’ 51st state Canada’s ruling Liberals, who a few weeks ago looked certain to lose an election this year, are mounting a major comeback amid the threat of US tariffs and are tied with their rival Conservatives, according to three new polls. An Ipsos survey released late on Tuesday showed that the left-leaning Liberals have 38 percent public support and the official opposition center-right Conservatives have 36 percent. The Liberals have overturned a 26-point deficit in six weeks, and run advertisements comparing the Conservative leader to Trump. The Conservative strategy had long been to attack unpopular Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but last month he
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
THIRD ANNIVERSARY OF WAR: Ursula von der Leyen said that Europe was in Kyiv because ‘it is not only the destiny of Ukraine that is at stake. It’s Europe’s destiny’ A dozen leaders from Europe and Canada yesterday visited Ukraine’s capital to mark the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion in a show of support for Kyiv by some of its most important backers. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau were among the visitors greeted at the railway station by Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha and the president’s chief of staff Andrii Yermak. Von der Leyen wrote on social media that Europe was in Kyiv “because Ukraine is in Europe.” “In this fight for survival, it is not only the destiny of Ukraine that is
RSS