Rescue team finds 11 European tourists, one crew member alive after speedboat sank in Indonesia
Updated ,first published
Palu, Indonesia: Indonesian rescue teams have found alive 11 European tourists and a local crew member who were missing after their speedboat broke apart and sank in rough weather off a bay on the island of Sulawesi, officials said Saturday. Search teams continued to search for the captain of the ship.
Heriyanto, head of the Gorontalo Province Search and Rescue Office, said the ship left a diving resort in Central Sulawesi province’s Tojo Unauna regency on Friday morning for Marisa Port in neighboring Gorontalo province, but did not arrive as planned.
Heriyanto, who like many Indonesians uses a single name, said a local tour guide reported the missing boat to the search and rescue office at 3.40pm on Friday, prompting an emergency search operation.
“Concerns arose when the speedboats did not arrive in the afternoon,” Heriyanto said. “We immediately launched a search mission throughout the night but have so far found no sign of the ship or the people on board.”
According to Indonesian officials, there were five Dutch citizens, three Germans, a Czech, a Belgian man, a French woman and two Indonesian crew members on board.
There has been no immediate comment from the embassies representing the missing tourists.
Based on the tour boat’s route projections, dozens of search and rescue teams were deployed in a search operation covering about 300 square nautical miles of waters along and around Tomini Bay, a famous marine tourism destination with dozens of islands in its vast waters, Heriyanto said.
Indonesia’s meteorological agency forecast generally clear skies in the region, but on Saturday rescue teams faced challenging sea conditions, including strong winds and waves as high as 2.5 metres.
On Saturday afternoon, rescue teams using two speedboats searched the waters where the ship was believed to have been lost and eventually found that all 11 foreign tourists and one crew member were alive. However, Heriyanto said that the identity of the 29-year-old captain of the boat was not disclosed.
“We will continue the search and rescue operation for up to seven days to find him,” he said, adding that the rescued passengers were safely evacuated and are staying at a facility in Tojo Unauna.
Survivors told rescuers that the ship had encountered severe weather conditions that caused their boat to break apart before the accident, prompting the passengers to reach a life raft and rescue themselves, while the captain was separated from the group due to poor visibility due to dense fog.
“It was believed that the captain remained on the ship while the ship broke in two and sank,” Heriyanto said.
Indonesia is an archipelago of more than 17,000 islands where boats are a common means of transportation. Accidents occur frequently due to lax safety standards and overcrowding problems.
On July 15, a passenger boat carrying 76 people sank off the coast of Selayar Island, killing at least four people and missing 14 people.
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