Indonesia searches the Java Sea after Virgo Transport 8 loses contact

Indonesian search crews spent Sunday working a patch of the Java Sea after the passenger ship Virgo Transport 8 dropped off communications in bad weather. The vessel had left Surabaya, East Java, at 10:13 on Saturday bound for Banjarmasin in South Kalimantan. The Banjarmasin search and rescue office said it received the missing report about two hours after contact failed around 02:00 on Sunday.

The last known position was given as about 148 kilometres, or 92 miles, from a pier in Banjarmasin. Xinhua, citing the same office, put the distance at about 80 nautical miles from a search and rescue pier. Manifests cited by officials listed 241 passengers in one count and 243 people in another. The operator named in reports is Virgo Yoel Rihi.

What rescuers said by mid-morning

Early statements said there were no confirmed casualties and that the ship's location was unknown. That picture moved. I Putu Sudayana, head of the Banjarmasin rescue office, said in a video briefing that 103 people had been taken off by other ships, with some of them headed to an East Java port. The Guardian, citing the same official, said 103 were evacuated and one of them died, leaving about 140 still to find. The BBC, a short time later, reported one dead and 102 rescued from a complement of 243, with the search continuing.

Arianto Ardi, operations chief at the Banjarmasin office, said a post had been set up at Trisakti, the city's cargo and passenger waterfront on the Barito. A rescue ship and a helicopter were sent toward the last fix. Other traffic in that part of the Java Sea was told to watch for people in the water.

Officials did not, in the first hours, describe the condition of the hull. They said the operator reported bad weather. They did not say whether the ship had capsized, grounded or simply lost radios.

A route that carries everyday traffic

Surabaya to Banjarmasin is a standard inter-island run between Java and southern Borneo. Ferries and passenger ships move workers, families and cargo on that crossing because air tickets cost more and the schedule is denser. Indonesia has more than 17,000 islands. Sea routes are the ordinary way to move between many of them.

Safety records on those routes are uneven. A separate Indonesian ferry fire off Madura last month killed five people. Overloading, weather and weak radio discipline show up in accident files with a regularity that local reporters no longer treat as a surprise. Sunday's search will test whether the passenger list, the weather log and the radio timeline match what the operator first told the rescue office.

Numbers in the first twelve hours already disagree by a few bodies. That is common when a manifest, a company list and a count of people pulled from the water are compiled by different desks. The figure that will settle is the number still missing once the ships on scene finish a box search around the last position.

Until that count is closed, families in Surabaya and Banjarmasin are waiting on a radio that went quiet before dawn.