Indonesia air crash: heartbreak of a daughter searching for missing dad

Like most regular business travellers in Indonesia, Bambang Rozali Usman normally flew national carrier Garuda.

A police officer examines belongings recovered from the Lion Air plane. Picture: AP

All but four families of the 189 victims on board Lion Air flight JT610 that plunged into the Java Sea on Monday morning, killing everyone on board, has submitted DNA or ante mortem data, Indonesian authorities said yesterday, even as they cautioned that the force of the crash meant some victims might never be identified.

Grieving relatives crowded Jakarta’s Police Hospital yesterday, bringing with them pictures, clothes, toothbrushes, hairbrushes, and submitting to oral swabs conducted by police Disaster Victim Identification officers in the hope of being able to retrieve loved ones for burial.

Among the earliest was 22-year-old Liftiana Eka Kurniawati, who arrived determined to give a DNA sample in the hope of finding her father, an official with ­Indonesia’s state treasury department, only to crumple in fear minutes later at the thought of what that information might reveal.

“I came to give DNA but I don’t think I have the strength now,” she said, dissolving into tears. “I am waiting for my brother. We will do the test together.”

Like most regular business travellers in Indonesia, Bambang Rozali Usman flew on national carrier Garuda whenever possible, steering clear of low-cost airlines such as Lion Air in a country with a reputation for poor air safety.

“The last we talked was by WhatsApp, before dawn prayers. He told me he was boarding a flight to Pangkal Pinang. I was surprised when he said he was taking Lion Air,” Liftiana said.

“When I heard the news about the crash I was devastated. I tried contacting him, but to no avail.”

Inside the hospital, National Police health division chief Arthur Tampi warned the identification process would be complicated by the fact that none of the bodies found so far have been intact. Among yesterday’s grim discoveries was the partial remains of an infant, one of only two on board.

Flight JT610 from Jakarta to Pangkal Pinang, in Bangka Belitung province, was gaining speed and losing and gaining altitude before vanishing from radars, 13 minutes into a 70-minute flight. At least a dozen fishermen and a tugboat captain watched it plunge nose-down into the water

Mr Tampi said: “The most likely identification will be through DNA because at this point no fingerprints or teeth have been found. That will take an average of four days for each victim, and only blood relations of the victims can give DNA samples.

“With these condition maybe not all victims can be found.”

Late yesterday, 37 body bags containing human body parts had been collected from within 10 nautical miles of the crash site in the Java Sea.

Eleven kilometres away, on the muddy shoreline of Tanjung Karawang, west Java, crowds gathered to watch police, military and search-and-rescue workers shuttle to and from the crash site in rubber boats, where they have been combing the area for debris and human remains and ferrying their discoveries to a mother ship offshore.

Currents in the Java Sea have been pushing debris and body parts towards Tanjung Karawang, with pieces collected as close as three nautical miles off the beach yesterday, National Search and Rescue Agency (Basarnas) west Java chief Deden Ridwansyah told The Australian: “We are very confident we will find more debris here and our hope is to find some of the victims. Everybody we deploy is equipped with body bags.”

The priority is to find the main wreckage of the two-month-old Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft, inside which authorities believe many of the victims may still be trapped.

Five warships equipped with sonar have now been deployed.

Both the cockpit’s voice recorder and flight data recorder are still missing.

Additional reporting Nivell Rayda