‘Dad will keep searching until he finds him’: Heartache for family of missing man

Nias, Indonesia: The family of an Indonesian man still missing after a rescue operation that saved four Australian surfers have spoken of their heartache as his father vows to keep searching in his own boat until he finds him.

Fivan Satria, 22, has not been seen since Monday when he was washed away from the Australian tourists and his two Indonesian crewmates, who were floating on surfboards and surfboard bags in the waters of the remote Banyak Islands after their wooden longboat hit a storm and began to capsize.

Missing Indonesian man Fivan Satria, in a photo supplied by his family.

Elliot Foote, Steph Weisse, Jordan Short and Will Teagle were eventually found on Tuesday, as were Indonesian boat captain Mohammad Iqbal and Junardi Akhmad, the manager of the resort to which the Australians were headed but there has been no sign of Fivan.

His father Musa, who is also a longboat skipper in the Banyaks, said he was supposed to transport the Australians from Nias to their private surf retreat on Pinang Island on Sunday but when he fell ill he sent Fivan, who works with him collecting guests.

He has since been out in his own boat desperately looking in the area around where the other six people on board were located, as other villagers and local rescue teams also mount a widening search mission.

“Dad said he will keep searching until he finds him. He will not stop looking,” Fivan’s 18-year-old sister Farima Purnamasari said in an interview with this masthead.

Australians Jordan Short, Will Teagle, Elliot Foote and Steph Weisse with Yustinus Sega (centre), the Indonesian search and rescue officer who found three of them on Tuesday. Foote was rescued by fishermen.Credit: GoFundMe

“The family suspects Fivan is stranded somewhere but he is still alive. He can [swim] but it’s been four days, so he may get weaker and weaker.”

Amid unconfirmed local reports that a life jacket had been discovered at sea by rescuers, as was the abandoned boat, which was full of water, it’s feared the rescue mission is now a retrieval operation. According to Junardi, Fivan had been lying on a surfboard bag with the rest of the group but as they sought to paddle towards the nearest island, he said he was tired and hungry and drifted away.

At the family home, Fivan’s mother Erlisda, who bakes and sells cookies in the neighbourhood, has been comforted by a steady stream of visiting friends and relatives but can barely process the grim situation.

“She has stopped selling cookies, she cannot think,” Farima said. “She does not even go to the kitchen, she only cries, say prayers. We recite the Koran every night and pray five times a day. We all pray so that my brother is safe.”

The parents of missing Indonesian Fivan Satria, Musa and Erlisda.

Fivan is the eldest of five children, with two younger brothers and sisters, the youngest of whom is 13.

Before the ill-fated venture on Sunday, he had not gone out to sea lately, according to his sister, and instead had done some work building houses.

“But he went to Pinang because there was this job for him to go to Pinang. Dad was sick, so he was replaced by my brother,” she said.

“[Fivan] can do everything, he can work at the sea, he can do carpentry work. Whenever he has a job on land, he won’t go to the sea. But in the case he does not have a construction project, Dad and brother Fivan will take tourists from Nias to Pinang and from Pinang to Nias.”

The search was continuing on Thursday, 72 hours after Fivan’s disappearance from the others in the water, and as Indonesia’s Independence Day was being celebrated on Nias with traditional games and a flag raising ceremony.

Junardi, the Pinang resort manager, told this masthead: “I’ve mentioned to the search and rescue team to keep on searching as vigorously as before. They can’t lessen the effort just because the foreigners have been found.”

He said he had seen photographs of a surfboard that had been recovered but it was Weisse’s extra board and had not been held on to by Fivan.

The families of the Australian tourists have started a GoFundMe page to support the Haloban community, who are mainly fishermen and had joined the search effort, and Fivan’s family. They said they would also direct a portion of donations to try and improve maritime safety in the area.

Foote, whose 30th birthday the party of Australians had come to Indonesia to celebrate, said in a post on Instagram on Thursday that his deepest thoughts were with the family of the missing man - “our joyful young guide who hasn’t been found”.

“I wish there was more we could have done to help you, and that will stay with me as a burden to bear,” he said. “I understand the loneliness you must have felt in those hours by yourself, and my condolences to your family.”

Officials from the Australian embassy in Jakarta have been on Nias since Tuesday and have remained here with the Australian surfers due to travel via the island when they leave Pinang in coming days.

Indonesia’s National Search and Rescue Agency, called Basarnas, has said it will keep scouring the ocean for Fivan until at least next Monday.

With Amilia Rosa

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