1/12/2021 Indonesia Plane Crash Shakes Small Fishing Village - The New York Times

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ʻIʼm Still Shockedʼ: Indonesian Airline Crash Shakes Small Fishing Village
A sleepy island has become a base for the aircraft search and recovery operation after Sriwijaya Air Flight 182 fell from the sky. “Iʼm
lucky it didnʼt hit me,” said one fisherman.
By Dera Menra Sijabat and Richard C. Paddock

Jan. 11, 2021 Updated 5:04 p.m. ET

LANCANG ISLAND, Indonesia — Hendrik Mulyadi was checking his crab traps when he heard a huge explosion on the water nearby.
The sea suddenly rose, lifting the Indonesian fisherman’s boat as smoke filled the air.

“I’m lucky it didn’t hit me,” he recalled on Monday, sitting at his home on Lancang Island and still visibly shaken by what he saw. “It
was like lightning, very fast. It exploded when it hit the water. I saw debris floating. It was airplane debris.”

Mr. Hendrik, 30, was one of five crab fishermen who were out working on the water Saturday afternoon when Sriwijaya Air Flight 182
fell from the sky minutes after takeoff with 62 people onboard, 10 of them children and babies. The plane crashed into the Java Sea,
about 300 feet from where Mr. Hendrik was fishing.

Normally a sleepy island with relatively few visitors, Lancang has become a base for the aircraft search and recovery operation led by
Basarnas, Indonesia’s national search and rescue agency. The crash site is less than a mile from the island’s mangroves, coconut and
banana trees.

The islanders, many of whom live in colorful, single-story homes, can now see dozens of vessels offshore, combing the area for
wreckage and bodies and trying to recover the black box.

Divers searching for the remains of the victims of the flight off the coast of Jakarta on Monday. M. Risyal Hidayat/Antara Foto, via Reuters

The Sriwijaya flight, which was bound for the city of Pontianak on the island of Borneo, is the third passenger plane in just over six
years to crash into the Java Sea after departing from airports on Java island.

Air Asia Flight 8501 crashed into the Java Sea off the coast of Borneo in December 2014 with 162 people aboard as it flew from the
Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore. Investigators eventually blamed the disaster on the failure of a key component and an
improper response by the flight crew.
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1/12/2021 Indonesia Plane Crash Shakes Small Fishing Village - The New York Times

And in October 2018, Lion Air Flight 610 nose-dived into the Java Sea northeast of Jakarta, the capital, minutes after takeoff with 189
passengers and crew on board to Pangkal Pinang. The anti-stall system malfunctioned on the Boeing 737, a different plane from the
one in the crash this weekend.

Lancang is one of the so-called Thousand Islands, which actually number about 110 and are scattered in the Java Sea north of Jakarta.
Some of the islands are popular tourist destinations. Others, like Lancang, are devoted almost exclusively to fishing.

“Since the Lion Air crash, I often think when I’m on the sea and I see a plane pass by, what if an airplane crashes here?” Mr. Hendrik
said. “There are many fishermen here. We would die.”

Less than a mile long and a third of a mile wide, Lancang is home to about 2,100 people, nearly all of them connected to the fishing
trade. The small, mostly Muslim community is just 15 miles northeast of Jakarta and one of the closest of the Thousand Islands to the
city’s Soekarno-Hatta International Airport.

There are no cars and residents get around on foot or by motorbike. The main road is only one lane wide, and it takes less than an
hour to walk all the way around the island.

Hendrik Mulyadi, a fisherman, witnessed the crash on Saturday of Sriwijaya Air Flight
182.  Dera Menra Sijabat for The New York Times

Few of the islanders have ever flown on an airplane. On clear days, they can see them pass overhead as they take off from Jakarta for
northern destinations. Still, Mr. Hendrik said he never could have anticipated what happened on Saturday.

“I never thought a plane crash could happen here,” he said.

The island’s village chief, Mahtum, 47, who like many Indonesians uses only one name, said many families on the island eke out a
living and lead simple lives. Lancang has been virtually untouched by the coronavirus, with just three cases that were detected last
week. But the islanders live under the threat of tsunamis.

The highest elevation in the entire Thousand Island chain is 23 feet, leaving many vulnerable to rising sea levels and the kind of
extreme storms that delayed the Sriwijaya flight before takeoff. Lancang’s highest point is seven feet above sea level. Some fishermen
thought Saturday’s crash was a coming deluge.

“Not only Lancang Island, but all islands in the Thousand Islands are threatened by high tides and strong winds because of climate
change,” Mr. Mahtum said.

When the airplane fell into the sea, it was so close to the island that it rattled windows. One fisherman, Sahapi, was on the water with
his crew of one, checking his crab traps not far from Mr. Hendrik’s boat when the disaster struck.

Mr. Sahapi, 52, a fisherman on Lancang Island since 1987, said he heard what sounded like a huge explosion. He felt the sea lift his
boat and saw flashes of yellow and red beneath the surface.

“I saw debris in the rising water,” he said. “Thick black smoke filled the air and the rain was heavy. The water was yellow and red.”

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Parts of a plane recovered from the waters off Java Island where Sriwijaya Air flight SJ-182 crashed on Saturday. Ulet Ifansasti for The New York Times

At first, he thought there might have been a tsunami, then he realized Mr. Hendrik’s boat was closer to the site of the explosion. He
decided his friend must have been struck by lightning.

“I was afraid to be rolled by the wave,” he said. “I looked right and left and I didn’t see my friend’s boat.”

“I didn’t hear any airplane sound,” he said.

He hurried home to deliver what he thought was the bad news of Mr. Hendrik’s death. To his relief, Mr. Hendrik returned soon after
and reported that there had been an airplane crash.

Mr. Sahapi took police officers from the island out to the scene after he learned of the crash and helped them use an anchor to pull up
some wiring and bits of clothing from the aircraft.

By Sunday, searchers had located the airplane’s flight data recorders and hoped to recover them soon. But it could take months before
investigators determine the cause of the crash. Efforts continued Monday to extract bodies and recover the data recorders from the
wreckage.

The Sriwijaya plane, a Boeing 737-500, was deemed safe to fly before takeoff and the airline had never suffered a crash that resulted in
fatalities on board. More than 50 ships and thousands of people are involved in the search and recovery.

Mr. Hendrik, who was born and raised on Lancang, started fishing with his father as a child and has been a fisherman ever since. His
crew of two was on his 33-foot boat with him at the time of the crash.

He said he was still in such shock after what he witnessed that he declined to go with the police to show them the location.

“I was still in trauma,” he said. “I just sat at home shaking, and I was stuttering while speaking. I have lost my appetite until now. I’m
still shocked.”

The authorities have not allowed the Lancang crab fishermen to check their traps near the crash site since Saturday. Mr. Hendrik has
550 traps waiting in the sea.

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