Rescue ships collected scores of bloated corpses on Monday from seas close to where an Indonesian ferry sank in the Java Sea, but search teams also spotted survivors on life rafts and dropped food and water to them, officials said.
Weeping relatives camped out at ports and a local hospital, desperate for news of the roughly 400 people still missing from the ferry when it sank during a violent storm minutes before midnight on Friday. So far, more than 150 people have been found alive, either packed into lifeboats, clinging on to debris or on beaches after
swimming ashore, officials say. Dozens of bodies have either been spotted or collected.
”I am tired of crying,” said Sipan, who had been staying at Rembang hospital waiting for news of his son. ”Dead or alive, I will accept his destiny. It is up to God. All I can do is keep waiting.” Sipan goes by a single name.
Search official Captain Hadi Siswanto said that rescue boats were picking up scores of bloated bodies on Monday that had so far been left in the sea because officials were concentrating their search for survivors.
Workers at Rembang Hospital constructed a makeshift morgue for the bodies.
Rescue chief Eko Prayitno said a helicopter on Monday spotted an unspecified number of people still alive in the sea. The crew dropped food and water to them and boats would try and pick them later, he said.
Eleven survivors and two corpses arrived at Rembang port on Java’s northern coast on a fishing boat early Monday, authorities said.
The Senopati Nusantara sank quickly after being pounded by heavy waves for more than 10 hours on a journey from the Indonesian section of Borneo island to the country’s main island of Java.
Officials have given differing numbers of people saved and bodies collected, hampered by poor communication and the fact that ships are bringing survivors to shore at several ports.
The ferry, which was built in Japan in 1992, had a capacity of 850 people, but the transport minister earlier said it had 638 people on board based on the manifest. Officials say bad weather was the cause of the accident.
Indonesia’s tropical waters are generally 22 to 29° Celsius. People have been known to survive days at sea, but only with a buoyancy aid.
Survivors told harrowing stories of the minutes before the ship went down as well as the struggle to stay alive in the hours that followed.
Waluyo (50) recalled holding onto a large tyre and seeing two of his children lose their grip and drown.
”For 17 hours we held on, sometimes being turned over in the swell, but one by one the people fell off, including my two children,” he said from a hospital on Sunday. ”I could not do anything apart from pray.” Waluyo goes by a single name.
Indonesia has been wracked by weeks of seasonal rains and high winds that have caused several deadly floods, landslides and maritime accidents. Antara reported a cargo ship carrying 11 people sunk off Bali island on Sunday and two survivors had swam to shore. The rest were missing. – Sapa-AP