Divers who retrieve bags full of debris and body parts off the coast of Jakarta on January 11.
Photographer: Demy Sanjaya / AFP / Getty Images
Photographer: Demy Sanjaya / AFP / Getty Images
Bayu Wardoyo tends to skip the 6am breakfast of Indonesian fried rice served to divers on the ship looking for wreckage from the Sriwijaya Air passenger jet that crashed into the Java Sea on January 9 . He prefers coffee, light snacks, and some fruit to prepare for the long day ahead.
Later in the morning, dressed in a black wetsuit and burdened with diving equipment, he boards a speedboat and sets off under heavy monsoon clouds for the day’s search area. Once there, Wardoyo attaches his dive controller and rolls overboard into waters full of new tragedy.
Source: Indonesia Divers Rescue Team
Indonesia has suffered several air disasters over the past decade, and Wardoyo has been involved in more than his share of submarine searches. The 49-year-old was working on recovery efforts after one AirAsia jet plane with 162 people fell into the Java Sea in December 2014. Less than four years later, he returned to the same waters to hunt for debris and bodies in the aftermath of a Lion Air crash that claimed 189 lives. Now he’s back there after Sriwijaya Air Flight 182 crashed into the ocean with 62 people on board. Among them were seven children and three babies.
He has never seen a crash as devastating as this one.
“This crash in Sriwijaya is the worst. The fuselage has been completely destroyed and scattered, ”Wardoyo said by text message. ‘We only found small pieces of human remains. In the Lion Air crash we still found large pieces and in the AirAsia crash we found almost a complete human body. “
Seek challenge
The debris from Sriwijaya Air Flight 182 is spread over an area of approximately two kilometers
Sources: Mahakarya Geo Survey, FlightRadar24
SJ182 plummeted nearly 10,000 feet (3,050 meters) in 14 seconds shortly after takeoff from Jakarta on a stormy Saturday afternoon. The National Transport Security Commission of Indonesia has confirmed that the Boeing Co. 737-500’s engines were running when the plane hit the sea at high speed, indicating that the plane was severely damaged in the collision. What triggered the violent dive remains a mystery.
One possibility researchers are investigating is that the pilots are losing control because a A malfunctioning throttle triggered more thrust in one of the engines, a person familiar with the situation said. The device had problems on previous flights, the person said.
As the search begins in its second week, hopes are fading that the cockpit voice recorder – a crucial puzzle piece in figuring out what unfolded – will ever be found. Divers retrieved the housing of the so-called black box on Friday, but the memory chip that records communication between pilots and ambient noise in the cockpit had broken loose.
The flight data recorder was fixed last week and will provide clues as to whether this was a problem with the Boeing plane, a pilot error, a freak weather event or something completely different. But the investigation is paralyzed without the other black box. The locator beacons from both were dislodged when the plane crashed into the water, a blow so hard it would have been as against concrete, according to Queensland-based air safety specialist Geoffrey Dell.
With the AirAsia crash in 2014, “the aircraft body was still intact – only broken into three pieces, so we had to pull bodies out of the plane,” said Wardoyo.
“The Lion Air crash was different, the fuselage fell apart, but we could still find large pieces of the fuselage. Sriwijaya is the worst, ”he said.
Indonesian researchers extended the search period, extending the divers’ stay on the command ship off the coast in northern Jakarta, but the hunt for victims was called off late Thursday afternoon. Wardoyo leads a group of 15 professional civilian divers with various qualifications, such as deep sea exploration and cave diving. One is a police officer and diving instructor. The team of volunteers supports specialist divers from the National Search and Rescue Agency of Basarnas. He’s not optimistic about restoring the rest of the voice recorder.
“Since the fuselage is completely disintegrating into small pieces and the seabed is very thick mud, it would be very difficult to collect anything after more than seven days,” said Wardoyo. “It’s almost impossible to find the memory or any other part of the recorder.”
A navy diver traps debris from flight SJY182. One of the dangers for divers include heart attacks from overexertion caused by lifting heavy debris in strong currents.
Photographer: Adek Berry / AFP / Getty Images
An official of the Indonesian NTSC said Tuesday that cockpit voice recorder data was needed to support the flight data analysis findings. Representatives from Boeing, the US National Transportation Safety Board, the Federal Aviation Administration, and General Electric Co. traveled to Indonesia to assist in the investigation. A preliminary report on the crash should be published within 30 days, local authorities said Tuesday.
Bad weather and high seas in Indonesia’s monsoon season do complicated recovery efforts. “Big swells, high winds and rain wouldn’t affect the divers down below, but it makes it difficult for the surface team operating dinghies and dinghies,” Wardoyo said. “It also makes it more difficult for divers to switch to the mothership in bad weather.”
According to Wardoyo, the command ship had to return to shore early Wednesday after being damaged in a collision with another boat in heavy swell and high winds at about 1 a.m. The divers returned to the crash site later that morning with a smaller boat.
While diving carries some risk regardless of the conditions, it is amplified during a search mission, Wardoyo said. Shark attacks aren’t a problem, but decompression sickness, drowning and even overload heart attacks caused by lifting heavy pieces of wreckage in strong currents are among the dangers, he said.
“We don’t take credit for doing this, but at least we can help others with our expertise,” said Wardoyo. “Everyone would do the same.”
Navy personnel remove part of the plane that was salvaged in the Java Sea on January 12. The plane’s engines were running when the plane hit the sea at high speed, indicating that the plane was in one piece on impact.
Photographer: Tatan Syuflana / AP Photo
The challenging conditions may prompt authorities to use other means to collect aircraft waste rather than relying on divers, Jakarta aviation analyst Gerry Soejatman said. “They can use vacuum pumps or dredging when all the victims have been identified or when there are no human remains on the scene,” he said.
Wardoyo, who lives in Jakarta with his wife, has been involved in the search since the day after the crash. At sea, the teams wake up early, around 5 a.m., and after breakfast, a briefing is held on the plans for the day. Wardoyo leads those meetings together with the commander of the Basarnas specialized dive team. Weather permitting, they will go to the search area on dinghies or rigid inflatables at 8 or 9 in the morning.
On good days, visibility is three to five meters underwater, but this week it dropped to a meter or less, Wardoyo said. In the aftermath of the crash, Indonesian officials briefed the media about the number of bags with body parts and airplane wreckage brought ashore. Members of Wardoyo’s team, in accordance with Basarnas protocol, wear surgical gloves under diving gloves for handling human remains.
“It’s not nice to us, but we always think about the families who have lost loved ones,” said Wardoyo. “It’s not easy, we have to go on inch by inch.”
– With the help of Harry Suhartono, Adrian Leung, Alan Levin and Angus Whitley
(Adds a search for victims called off late Thursday in the 12th paragraph.)