MEDAN, Indonesia: All 18 people aboard a plane that crashed on the Indonesian island of Sumatra were found dead on Saturday, an official said, after two days of hampered efforts to reach the remote jungle site.
Hopes that some on board the aircraft might be alive had been raised when a victim’s mother reported that her daughter had called her from the plane after the crash on Thursday, and aerial photos showed the main cabin largely intact.
But after rescuers finally reached the site, national search-and-rescue operations chief Sunarbowo Sandi announced, “We received a radio response from our team on the ground that all 18 people on the plane had died.
“The passengers were still in their seats. A team is trying to cut through the aircraft and retrieve the bodies,” he said.
As Sandi confirmed the deaths, scores of relatives who had gathered in Bohorok in North Sumatra, near where the Nusantara Buana Air Casa 212 went down after departing Medan, let out cries of despair.
Some passed out and were taken away on stretchers, while others lambasted the government for its slow response.
For two days rescuers tried to reach the crash location by foot and by helicopter, but rough terrain, strong winds and heavy clouds and rains forced three teams travelling by land and several helicopters to return to Medan.
The Indonesian Transport Association said that the rescue teams had followed standard procedures and had done their best given the “impossible” conditions.
“The weather in Bohorok is extreme and unpredictable. There was heavy rain, fog and strong winds,” said Suharto Abdul, the head of the association’s aviation forum.
The turboprop plane took off from Medan on Thursday morning and was heading for the nearby province of Aceh.
But it sent a distress signal soon afterward and crashed at 1,100 meters in a mountainous area about 70 kilometers northwest of Medan.
A search team on the ground built an emergency helipad on Saturday to enable the bodies to be transported to Medan. There, the health department and police will examine the corpses before bringing them to a hospital.
But Sandi warned that bad weather could again disrupt the process.
AFP
