Trenggalek - The ship carrying hundreds of migrant workers that sank in waters off Prigi, East Java, on Saturday, lacked safety equipment, resulting in a mad scramble for just 19 available life vests on board, the head of the search and rescue team dispatched the accident said on Sunday.
The Surabaya Search and Rescue (SAR) team said the doomed ship had 25 life jackets on board, but six of them taken by the ship's crew, leaving the hundreds of panicking passengers to fight amongst themselves for the remaining 19 life jackets.
According to Surabaya SAR III office chief Sutrisno, the lack of safety equipment on board the ship made it difficult for the victims to survive the accident. He said the passengers had held onto the sinking remains of the, he said.
"They did not have much safety equipment," he said on Sunday, as quoted by tempo.com.
He said that the accident, which was initially thought to have been caused by rough seas, might have also been caused by the fact that the ship had too many passengers aboard.
A spokesman of the Trenggalek administration, East Java, confirmed that the ship’s maximum capacity was 100 passengers, but that the subk ship had around 250 people on board.
East Java Police deputy chief General Brigadier Eddi Sumantri said earlier that the ship sunk after being struck by a huge wave 20 miles off the Prigi shore on Saturday morning.
“They [the bodies of the victims] were found by fishermen after six hours floating in the sea,” he said.
A rescue team from Trenggalek said that it had so far found 33 dead bodies floating in the sea, consisting of 31 men, 1 woman and 2 children.
Survivors are currently being treated at the Watulimo clinic in Trenggalek and Bhayangkara Hospital in Tulungagung.
A preliminary police investigation revealed that the immigrants were from Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey, and were headed for Australia in search of work.
Sumber: The Jakarta Post | Sun, 12/18/2011
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