Indonesian rescuers search for 140 people after a ferry loses contact
The Virgo Transport 8 was sailing from Surabaya to Banjarmasin with more than 240 aboard when it went missing in the Java Sea. 103 have been evacuated; one of them has died.
Indonesian rescuers were searching on Sunday for 140 people from a passenger ship reported missing in the Java Sea, after 103 others were evacuated. One of those evacuated died.
The Virgo Transport 8 was carrying more than 240 people when it lost contact during bad weather early on Sunday, the country's search and rescue agency said.
The voyage
The ship set sail on Saturday from Surabaya, in East Java, bound for Banjarmasin in South Kalimantan, on the island of Borneo.
It lost contact at about 2am on Sunday. The search and rescue office in Banjarmasin received a report two hours later, after the ship's operator was told the vessel had encountered difficulty.
That two-hour gap between loss of contact and the report reaching the authorities is a substantial delay at sea, where the search area expands with every hour a drifting vessel or people in the water are unaccounted for.
The response
I Putu Sudayana, head of the agency's Banjarmasin office, said in a video statement that 103 people had been evacuated using different ships, and that some of them would be taken to a port in East Java.
Rescuers deployed a team, ships and a helicopter towards the vessel's last known position.
Sudayana did not state what had happened to the ship itself.
What is not yet known
The central fact of the incident — whether the Virgo Transport 8 sank, is disabled, or is still afloat — has not been established in this account.
That distinction shapes the search. People recovered from other ships suggests they left the vessel; 140 still unaccounted for, against a total of more than 240, suggests an evacuation that was either incomplete or dispersed across a wide area of water.
The weather
The ship encountered bad weather in the Java Sea, which is the condition named in every account of the incident so far.
The Java Sea is a busy route between Java and Kalimantan, and the passenger traffic between Surabaya and Banjarmasin is routine rather than seasonal.
The regional picture
The search is one of three ferry incidents in the region in the space of days. The death toll from a ferry fire in the Philippines reached 76 on Saturday, and a ferry sank off Vanuatu on Friday with more than 30 people still missing.
The three are unconnected, and the causes appear different in each case — fire, weather and, in Vanuatu's case, what that government has described as warnings not being heeded.
Where it stands
More than 240 aboard, 103 evacuated, one dead among them, 140 being searched for. The operation was continuing on Sunday.
