Indonesian Ferry Fire Leaves Five Dead and an Unknown Number Missing off East Java

Indonesian rescuers spent Monday searching the sea off Madura island for passengers still unaccounted for after a ferry caught fire on Sunday, in a disaster where officials have said plainly they do not know how many people were on board.

The Mutiara Sentosa 2 was sailing from Surabaya, in East Java, to Makassar in South Sulawesi when fire broke out between 6am and 7am local time on Sunday, according to Basarnas, the national search and rescue agency. The vessel was about 35km north of Sapudi island, in Sumenep regency.

What the manifest does not settle

Basarnas said the manifest listed 271 people, 232 passengers and 39 crew, along with roughly 180 vehicles, mostly trucks. By Sunday afternoon the agency put the number rescued at 225 and the dead at five, with 41 unaccounted for.

By Monday the rescued figure had risen to 231, and officials stopped giving a number for the missing. Nanang Sigit, who heads the Surabaya search and rescue office and coordinated the mission, said the count on Indonesian ferries often differs from the manifest, and that the discrepancy complicates the search.

That is the central difficulty here. Until families and survivors are matched against the record, the number of people still in the water is not a figure anyone can state with confidence.

How passengers got off

Footage released by Basarnas showed heavy black smoke crossing the ship and passengers in life jackets gathered on the upper decks. Some jumped. Survivors described staying afloat for hours before passing vessels reached them.

Four other ships stood off without approaching, Basarnas said, because of the risk from flammable cargo. A tugboat and a passing vessel began taking people off, and navy ships joined later. A larger rescue operation had to travel roughly six hours from Surabaya.

What caused it

The cause is under investigation. Ahmad Abdul Karim, a survivor, said the fire appeared to have started in a truck on the lower vehicle deck. Officials have not confirmed that account.

Marine accidents are frequent in Indonesia, an archipelago of more than 17,000 islands where ferries carry people and freight between islands daily, and where safety enforcement has long been criticised as weak. The archipelago’s transport links carry both passengers and freight that rarely reach the rest of Southeast Asia by any other route.