One killed as fire breaks out on Indonesian ferry sailing from Bali

Indonesian rescue teams pulled more than 200 people to safety on Wednesday after a ferry that departed from the resort island of Bali caught fire in waters near Lombok, officials said, as crews continued searching for any passengers still unaccounted for.

By Wednesday afternoon, authorities had confirmed one Indonesian national dead among the 212 people evacuated to ports in Bali and Lombok, according to Muhammad Hariyadi, head of the local search and rescue agency. Most of those rescued were Indonesian citizens, with one Australian national also among the evacuees.

The KM Putri Yasmin had departed Padangbai port in Bali bound for Lembar port when the fire broke out, Hariyadi said. Authorities have not yet determined what caused the blaze or whether the vessel was carrying more passengers than permitted. Hariyadi said rescue teams deployed multiple boats to carry out evacuations and coordinate with other vessels near the site of the incident, with more than 200 personnel involved in the response.

The fire broke out in the Lombok Strait at 4:39 a.m. local time on Wednesday, Hariyadi said. Earlier in the day, Padangbai port official Heri Wiyanto told a local broadcaster that the ferry’s manifest listed only 114 passengers and 17 crew members, raising questions about whether the vessel exceeded its registered capacity.

The incident comes less than a month after a separate ferry fire killed five people off the coast of Madura island, when the KM Mutiara Sentosa 2 caught fire while also carrying more passengers than its manifest indicated.

Indonesia, a nation made up of roughly 17,000 islands, depends heavily on ferries for transportation between islands, since sea travel remains cheaper and more widely available than flying in many parts of the archipelago. Enforcement of maritime safety standards varies widely across the country, however, contributing to a comparatively high rate of ferry accidents in Indonesian waters.