Rescuers continued to scour the water for signs of life on Thursday morning, hours after authorities declared a major emergency after a ferry sank with 65 people on board close to the Indonesian island of Bali. Photo by Made Nagi/EPA
At least five people were killed and dozens were missing after a roll-on, roll-off passenger ferry sank in bad weather off the Indonesian tourist island of Bali.
The Tunu Pratama Jaya was making a short-3-mile hop across the Bali Strait from Banyuwangi in West Java when it went down with 65 passengers and crew and 22 vehicles on board shortly after 11:30 p.m. local time on Wednesday, according to the Surabaya office of the National Search and Rescue Agency.
The agency said that 31 people had been pulled from the water alive, but that the search for survivors was being hampered by stormy conditions with eight-foot waves and strong winds and currents in and around the site of the sinking.
The search and rescue operation, which was being followed closely by President Prabowo Subianto from Saudi Arabia, where he is on a state visit, involved more than 50 navy and police personnel, including divers, and a larger rescue vessel deployed from Surabaya.
“He immediately ordered the Basarnas ranks and related agencies to promptly carry out emergency response for the rescue of passengers and crew as quickly as possible,” Cabinet Secretary Lt. Col. Teddy Indra Wijayain said in a statement.
An official said the cause was “bad weather,” but the crew reported problems with the vessel’s engine and sent out a distress signal shortly before it went down.
A passenger manifest released by authorities indicated most of those rescued were residents of the port city of Banyuwangi or other parts of Java.
According to the maritime tracking website Vessel Finder, the 242-foot-long Tunu Pratama Jaya was built in 2010 with a gross weight of 792 tons and is Indonesian-flagged.
The sea route linking the main Indonesian island of Java with Bali is one of the busiest in the archipelago nation made up of more than 7,000 islands, with ferries the main mode of transport.
However, the country’s maritime operators have a poor safety record due to patchy enforcement of safety regulations and overcrowding.
An Australian woman was killed in March after a vessel capsized off Bali with 16 people on board and at least 15 people were killed in July 2023 when a ferry sank in the Banda Sea on a crossing between two small islands off Sulawesi.
In June 2018, three people were killed more than 160 remain missing, presumed dead, after a ferry sank on a lake in Sumatra.
Officials said the wooden vessel was loaded to five times its capacity and had just 45 life jackets for the 188 passengers and crew on board. Only 21 people were rescued.
