Divers bringing bags full of debris and body parts off the coast of Jakarta on January 11th.
Photographer: Demy Sanjaya / AFP / Getty Images
Photographer: Demy Sanjaya / AFP / Getty Images
Bayu Wardoyo tends to omit the Indonesian fried rice breakfast served to divers on the ship in search of the wreckage of the Sriwijaya Air passenger plane that crashed in the Java Sea on January 9th. He prefers coffee, light snacks and some fruit to prepare. for the next long day.
Later in the morning, dressed in a black suit and weighed by diving accessories, he climbs into a motor boat and heads under heavy monsoon clouds to the search area of the day. Once there, Wardoyo attaches his scuba controller and rolls overboard in the waters full of fresh tragedy.
Source: Rescue team from Indonesia
Indonesia has suffered several air disasters in the last decade, and Wardoyo has been involved in more than its fair share of underwater searches. The 49-year-old worked on recovery efforts after a AirAsia airliner carrying 162 people landed in the Java Sea in December 2014. Less than four years later, it returned to the same waters to hunt debris and corpses following a The Lion Air accident that was claimed 189 lives. It is now back there, after Sriwijaya Flight 182 sank 62 people on board. Among them were seven children and three infants.
He has never seen an accident as devastating as this.
“This Sriwijaya accident is the worst. The body of the aircraft is completely destroyed and scattered, “Wardoyo said in a text message. “I found only small pieces of human remains. At the crash of Lion Air I found large parts, and at the crash of AirAsia I found almost a complete human body. ”
Challenge search
The wreckage from Sriwijaya Flight 182 covers an area of about two kilometers
Sources: Mahakarya Geo Survey, FlightRadar24
The SJ182 dropped nearly 3,050 meters in 14 seconds shortly after taking off from Jakarta in a storm on Saturday afternoon. The Indonesian National Transport Safety Committee has confirmed that Boeing Co. 737-500 the engines were running when the plane hit the sea at high speed, indicating that the aircraft was in one piece on impact. What triggered the violent sinking remains a mystery.
One possibility that investigators are looking at is pilots who lose control because a the malfunction of the throttle produced more traction on one of the engines, according to a person familiar with the situation. The device had problems with previous flights, the person said.
With the search in the second week, hopes are dashed that the voice recorder in the cabin – a crucial piece to find out what happened – will ever be found. diving recovered the case of the so-called black box on Friday, but the memory chip that records the communication between the pilots and the ambient sound in the cabin came off.
Flight data recorder was recovered last week and will provide clues as to whether it was a Boeing plane problem, a pilot error, a strange weather situation or something else entirely. However, the investigation is paralyzed without the other black box. The location beacons of both were deployed when the plane entered the water, an impact so strong that, according to Queensland air safety specialist Geoffrey Dell, it was like hitting concrete.
With the crash of AirAsia in 2014, “the aircraft body was still intact – only broken into three pieces, so we had to remove the bodies from inside the aircraft,” Wardoyo said.
“The Lion Air accident was different, the body of the aircraft disintegrated, but we could still find large pieces of the fuselage. Sriwijaya is the worst, “he said.
Indonesian investigators extended the search period by extending the divers ‘stay on the command ship off the coast of northern Jakarta, but canceled the victims’ hunt late Thursday afternoon. Wardoyo leads a group of 15 professional civilian divers with various qualifications, such as deep exploration and cave diving. One is a police officer and a diving instructor. The team of volunteers supports specialist divers from the National Search and Rescue Agency or Basarnas. He is not optimistic about recovering the rest of the voice recorder.
“Because the body of the aircraft is completely disintegrated into very small pieces and the seabed is very thick mud, it would be very difficult to collect anything after more than seven days,” Wardoyo said. “It’s almost impossible to find the memory or another part of the recorder.”
A Navy diver owns wreckage from SJY182 flight. One of the dangers for divers includes heart attacks caused by overload caused by lifting heavy debris in strong currents.
Photographer: Adek Berry / AFP / Getty Images
An NTSC official from Indonesia said on Tuesday that data from the cockpit voice recorder were needed to support the findings from the flight data analysis. Representatives from Boeing, the US National Transportation Safety Board, the Federal Aviation Administration, and General Electric Co. they traveled to Indonesia to help with the investigation. A preliminary report on the accident should be published in 30 days, local authorities said on Tuesday.
Bad weather and high seas in Indonesia’s monsoon season hindered recovery efforts. “High swellings, strong winds and rain would not affect the divers below, but it makes it difficult for the surface team to operate boat and rubber boats,” Wardoyo said. “It also makes it difficult to transfer divers to the mother ship if the weather is bad.”
The command ship was due to return to shore early Wednesday, after being damaged in a collision with another boat at about 1 a.m., during strong waves and strong winds, according to Wardoyo. The divers returned to the scene of the accident later that morning on a smaller boat.
While diving poses a certain risk, regardless of the circumstances, it is amplified in a search mission, Wardoyo said. Shark attacks are not a problem, but decompression sickness, drowning and even heart attacks caused by overload caused by lifting heavy pieces of wreckage in strong currents are among the dangers, he said.
“We don’t assume and don’t want to do this, but at least we can help others with our expertise,” Wardoyo said. “Anyone would do the same.”
Navy personnel removed part of the aircraft recovered in the Java Sea on January 12th. The aircraft’s engines were running when the plane hit the sea at high speed, indicating that the aircraft was in one piece on impact.
Photographer: Tatan Syuflana / AP Photo
Difficult conditions may lead authorities to use other means to collect aircraft debris instead of relying on divers, according to Jakarta aviation analyst Gerry Soejatman. “I can use vacuum pumps or dredging once all the victims have been identified or there are no more human remains on the spot,” he said.
Wardoyo, who lives with his wife in Jakarta, has been involved in searches since the day after the crash. At sea, the teams wake up early, around 5 in the morning, and a briefing is organized on the plans for the day after breakfast. Wardoyo leads these meetings with the commander of the Basarnas specialized diving team. Weather permitting, head to the search area at 8 or 9 in the morning on rubber or rigid inflatable boats.
On good days, underwater visibility is three to five meters, but this week it has dropped to a meter or less, Wardoyo said. Following the accident, Indonesian officials informed the media the number of bags containing body parts and wreckage of the aircraft being brought ashore. Wardoyo’s team members, in accordance with the Basarnas protocol, wear surgical gloves under diving gloves to handle human remains.
“It’s not nice for us, but we always think of families who have lost loved ones,” Wardoyo said. “It’s not easy, we have to move inch by inch.”
– With the assistance of Harry Suhartono, Adrian Leung, Alan Levin and Angus Whitley
(The search for victims canceled late on Thursday in paragraph 12 is added.)