Rescue diver dies in search for victims
JAKARTA: An Indonesian rescue diver died during the search for a passenger jet that crashed last week near Jakarta, killing all 189 people on board, the search and rescue agency, Basarnas, said at the weekend.
Syachrul Anto (48) died on Friday while diving to search for victims of the crashed Lion Air aircraft, the agency said on Saturday via its Instagram account.
‘‘Deepest condolences for the passing of a humanitarian hero from the Indonesian Diving Rescue Team,’’ Basarnas chief Syaugi said in a news release.
Anto died about 4pm on Friday (local time), the agency said.
It was not immediately clear how Anto perished.
Anto’s family had chosen not to conduct an autopsy and asked for his remains to be buried immediately, Basarnas spokesman Yusuf Latif said.
Among other missions, Anto was also one of the main divers involved in the search for an AirAsia jet that crashed off Borneo in late 2014, he said.
Rescue divers have played critical roles in recovering human remains for identification and finding out what happened to the nearnew Boeing Co 737 MAX, which crashed into the Java Sea last Monday 13 minutes after taking off from Jakarta.
As of Saturday a total of 73 body bags, few containing intact remains, had been recovered from the site.
Divers have been searching for a second black box from the jet, as investigators tried to get data from a partly damaged recorder recovered from sunken wreckage on Thursday.
The pilot of flight JT610 had asked for, and received, permission to turn back to Jakarta, but what went wrong remains a mystery.
‘‘The team have been hearing the ‘ping’ sound from another black box for two days,’’ Soerjanto Tjahjono said.
The sea is only 30m deep at the crash site but strong currents and nearby pipelines have hampered the search.
While victims’ relatives are desperate to know what happened, the investigation of the first crash of a Boeing 737 MAX is also the focus of scrutiny by the global aviation industry.
Results of a preliminary investigation would be made public after 30 days, one official on the investigation team said.
Indonesia is one of the world’s fastestgrowing aviation markets but its safety record has been patchy.
Indonesia’s transport safety panel has had to investigate a total 137 serious aviation incidents from 2012 to 2017.
❛ The team have been hearing the ‘ping’ sound from another black box
for two days