Indonesia Ferry Fire Near Bali Kills One, Rescuers Evacuate 172 From Burning Vessel

An Indonesian passenger ferry caught fire early Wednesday while sailing between the tourist island of Bali and neighboring Lombok, killing one passenger and prompting rescuers to evacuate 172 people from the burning vessel in the second such ferry fire to strike Indonesia within days. The fire aboard the Putri Yasmin broke out around 4:15 a.m. as the ferry traveled from Padang Bai port in Bali to Lembar port in West Nusa Tenggara province, according to Indonesia's National Search and Rescue Agency, or Basarnas. The search and rescue office in the provincial capital, Mataram, said it received an emergency report roughly 30 minutes after the fire started and immediately deployed personnel and rescue vessels.

Rescuers recovered the body of a 19-year-old Indonesian woman, according to Muhamad Hariyadi, a search and rescue official on Lombok, where the ferry had been headed. An AFP photographer at Lembar saw one person brought ashore in a body bag. At least two injured passengers were taken to a nearby hospital, according to Syamsurizal, head of the Lembar Port Authority, who said the response operation was ongoing as authorities continued accounting for all those aboard. The ferry's manifest initially listed 131 people, including 17 crew members, but officials said hours after the fire that more people had been aboard than the manifest recorded, a discrepancy port authorities described as common for boats and ferries in Indonesia. The vessel was also carrying 44 vehicles and 53 motorcycles.

Passengers were evacuated across at least three vessels, including a navy ship and another passing ferry that rushed to help in the early morning hours, while additional search and rescue boats and a helicopter conducting aerial surveillance joined the operation. Hariyadi said the 172 people rescued included two Australian tourists, and that no passengers or crew remained aboard the blazing ferry once the evacuation was complete. Survivor Kiky Okta Pradika, 25, told reporters in Lembar that he grabbed a life jacket and jumped overboard with several other passengers rather than wait for help to arrive. "There were a few hours before there was any help," he said.

Wednesday's fire came just over a week after a separate blaze aboard the ferry Mutiara Sentosa 2, which was carrying 271 people from Surabaya in East Java to Makassar in South Sulawesi when it caught fire in waters off Sumenep regency on Aug. 2. That fire killed at least five people and left dozens missing, with rescuers pulling 227 passengers and crew from the water and off the burning vessel; at least 39 people remained unaccounted for as of that Sunday evening. The Mutiara Sentosa 2 had been carrying 181 vehicles, mostly trucks, along with an excavator, when the fire broke out between 6 and 7 a.m. local time, according to Basarnas.

The cause of Wednesday's fire, like that of the Mutiara Sentosa 2 blaze earlier this month, remained under investigation and had not been publicly determined as of Wednesday. Indonesia, an archipelago of more than 17,000 islands, relies heavily on ferries for inter-island travel, and maritime disasters occur there with some regularity; safety advocates and officials have repeatedly pointed to weak enforcement of vessel safety standards, including manifest accuracy and passenger limits, as a recurring factor in such incidents.

With two significant ferry fires now recorded in Indonesian waters within the span of ten days, officials face renewed pressure to determine whether the incidents share a common cause and whether existing safety inspections and manifest reporting requirements are being adequately enforced across the country's ferry network. Authorities in Lembar said Wednesday's rescue and accounting operation remained active, with officials continuing to work to confirm whether the number of people evacuated and recovered matches the true number who had been aboard the Putri Yasmin when the fire broke out.

Originally published on HNGN