Search for eight missing near Anak Krakatau extended three more days

Indonesian rescuers said on 14 September that they would keep searching for three more days for eight people missing since a speedboat vanished on 7 September on the way to cover the eruption of Anak Krakatau. Al Amrad, head of the Banten search and rescue office, told reporters the result so far was still zero. A male body found on Enggano Island, more than 350 kilometres from the volcano, is awaiting tests to see if it belongs to the group.

The boat left Pagedongan Pier in Carita, on the western Java coast, about 14:00 local time on 7 September. On board were five journalists and three boatmen. The journalists were M. Bagus Khoirunnas of the state agency Antara, Ari Basuki of Merdeka.com, Yudhis of iNews, Daus of Turkey's Anadolu Agency, and freelance journalist Donal Husni. The captain was Warta, 55. The crewman was Surakman, 60. The guide was Heriyanto, 49.

Police say one member of the group shared a location at 14:42. Contact was lost at 15:04 at coordinates given as 6 degrees 14 minutes south, 105 degrees 40 minutes east, in the Sunda Strait off Pandeglang. That evening Heriyanto sent a photograph showing the group near the volcano. Relatives received a last message at 18:13 saying the boat had reached the waters around Anak Krakatau. Nothing followed.

Bagus Khoirunnas had sent his wife a photograph of the five journalists on the boat before departure. An Antara colleague reported the group missing to Basarnas on 8 September at 13:55. The first search used the ship Tetuka and a joint team of 54 people from rescue services, police, the military, fishermen and residents. By 9 September the search box had been widened to about 271 nautical miles southwest of the volcano after digital drift modelling. Naval ships joined. Families have kept a watch at the search post.

Anak Krakatau, the cone that grew from the 1883 Krakatoa caldera, erupted from 4 to 6 September. Pusat Vulkanologi recorded a lava-fountain phase with an eruption earthquake lasting 21,600 seconds and a peak amplitude of 70 millimetres, the strongest intensity logged this year. NASA's Landsat 8 captured a white gas plume over a brown ash cloud on 5 September. Ash reached about 6,000 metres to the east and 15,000 metres to the west. Eight airports on Java and Sumatra closed. Nearly 3,000 flights were disrupted. Jakarta and parts of West Java saw ashfall. Operations resumed on 8 September. The volcano stayed at the second-highest alert level.

The journalists were doing the ordinary job that volcanic coverage in Indonesia requires: get close enough for pictures while the plume is still rising. The Sunda Strait is short on charts and hard in a small boat when ash, current and weather turn together. A week of searching without the hull suggests the boat either sank quickly or drifted far outside the first boxes. Enggano lies far to the west. If the body there is one of the eight, the drift path will rewrite the search map. If it is not, the zero result stands.

Indonesia sits on a crowded volcanic chain. Six volcanoes were in eruption at once on 31 August, which volcanologists treat as normal for the country rather than a single crisis. What is not normal is losing a press boat inside a strait that is also a shipping lane between Java and Sumatra. The names are now public. The employers include a state news agency and a foreign state agency. That combination keeps the search funded past the first news cycle.

Three more days, Amrad said. After that the status can shift from rescue to a longer recovery. The distinction matters to families. It does not change the geology. Anak Krakatau will erupt again. The question this week is whether the sea gives back the boat that went to watch it.