Indonesian rescuers searched Monday for passengers still missing after a ferry caught fire at sea the previous day off the island of Java, killing at least five people, officials said.
The Mutiara Sentosa 2 was sailing from Surabaya in East Java to Makassar in South Sulawesi when the fire broke out between 6 and 7 a.m. Sunday, according to search and rescue officials. Passengers described jumping overboard and floating in the sea for hours before being pulled to safety.
Rescue figures varied slightly between agencies. The regional Surabaya Search and Rescue Agency said 225 people had been rescued and 41 remained missing, while other reporting put the number rescued at 231, with the total missing still undetermined as of Monday.
What We Know So Far
The ferry’s manifest initially listed 271 people aboard, including 39 crew members, but officials said by Monday that more passengers than the manifest recorded were likely on the vessel. Nanang Sigit, who heads the Surabaya Search and Rescue Office and is coordinating the mission, said discrepancies between actual passenger counts and official manifests are common on Indonesian ferries and can complicate search efforts. Officials said they were relying partly on reports from survivors and victims’ families to establish how many people remain unaccounted for.
The fire occurred about 22 miles north of Sapudi island in the Sumenep regency, near Madura island off Java’s northeastern coast. Indonesian navy vessels and passing ships assisted in the rescue. Basarnas, Indonesia’s National Search and Rescue Agency, said four additional vessels stood by near the ferry but could not approach directly because of the risk posed by flammable cargo aboard.
The ferry was carrying about 180 vehicles, most of them trucks, in addition to passengers. Survivor Ahmad Abdul Karim said the fire appeared to start in a truck on the lower vehicle deck and spread rapidly once fanned by wind, forcing passengers toward the bow within about 30 minutes. Another passenger, who goes by the single name Azhari, said the fire broke out near the rear of the ferry as many passengers were just waking up and spread toward the middle of the vessel, leaving jumping into the sea as the only option. He said passengers spent roughly four hours in the water before nearby vessels began pulling them to safety.
Basarnas said the ferry’s captain had reported the fire to the ferry company as the vessel was sailing but had not been in contact since. A larger rescue operation was dispatched from Surabaya, roughly six hours from the site of the fire.
What Authorities Are Saying
Muhammad Masyhud, a senior official at Indonesia’s Ministry of Transportation, said in a statement that passengers were awaiting evacuation by nearby vessels and that the safety of those aboard remained the top priority. He said authorities were coordinating continuously with relevant agencies to carry out the evacuation quickly and safely.
Transportation Minister Dudy Purwagandhi said the government would review the performance of the ferry’s operator, Atosim Lampung Pelayaran, once Indonesia’s National Transportation Safety Committee completes its investigation into the cause of the fire. He said determining the cause would come first, based on the committee’s findings.
Why This Matters
The Mutiara Sentosa 2 was built in Japan in 1992 and sold to Indonesia in 2015. The vessel measures 525 feet and is certified to carry up to 689 passengers and 49 crew members, along with as many as 181 vehicles, meaning the ferry may have been operating well within its rated capacity even accounting for the manifest discrepancies officials described.
The Surabaya to Makassar route typically takes about 40 hours and serves mainly domestic travelers and cargo moving between Java and Sulawesi, two of Indonesia’s most populous islands. Ferries remain a primary mode of transportation across Indonesia’s archipelago of more than 17,000 islands, and maritime disasters occur with troubling regularity, a pattern officials and safety experts have repeatedly linked to weak enforcement of safety standards.
Sunday’s fire follows a ferry sinking last month near Selayar, a small island south of Sulawesi, which killed at least four people and left 14 others missing by the end of that search operation. The recurrence of fatal incidents within weeks of each other is likely to intensify scrutiny of ferry safety practices, including cargo loading procedures and the accuracy of passenger manifests, both of which have complicated rescue efforts in this case.
What Happens Next
Search crews are continuing to look for missing passengers, with the number still unaccounted for expected to become clearer as officials cross reference survivor accounts, family reports and updated headcounts. Indonesia’s National Transportation Safety Committee is expected to lead the formal investigation into what caused the fire, a process that will determine whether regulatory action follows against the ferry’s operator.
Authorities have not given a timeline for concluding the search operation or the safety investigation. Given the pattern of recent maritime accidents in Indonesian waters, pressure is likely to build on transportation officials to address the underlying safety gaps blamed for recurring disasters.
Reporting drawn from the Associated Press and The Jakarta Post, citing the Surabaya Search and Rescue Agency, Indonesia’s National Search and Rescue Agency (Basarnas) and Indonesia’s Ministry of Transportation.
