A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
In Indonesia, the search is continuing for at least 129 people still missing after a ferry capsized in heavy seas on Sunday. The search is being hampered by bad weather. More than a hundred people have been rescued, with at least six bodies recovered. Michael Sullivan reports.
MICHAEL SULLIVAN, BYLINE: Indonesia is a vast archipelago of some 17,000 islands where many people rely heavily on ferries for transportation, traveling by sea far cheaper and more simple than traveling by air. The nearly 400-foot-long Virgo Transport 8 is one of those ferries and left port Saturday from Surabaya in East Java, bound for Banjarmasin in South Kalimantan province on the island of Borneo. In the early hours of Sunday morning, the captain of the vessel reported 10-foot seas and shortly after issued a distress call, saying the ship was listing.
Then contact was lost, authorities say, and a rescue ship was sent to the vessel's last known position. By Sunday afternoon, rescue teams had been deployed on roughly a dozen vessels and two helicopters, one of which found the ship capsized roughly 90 miles from shore.
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UNIDENTIFIED PEOPLE: (Non-English language spoken).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Non-English language spoken).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Non-English language spoken).
SULLIVAN: Video on Indonesia's SCTV shows survivors in small red and blue lifeboats being hauled aboard a tugboat in choppy waters and high winds. Many of the survivors were taken to a crowded hall at Trisakti Port in Banjarmasin.
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AHMAD SAUDI: (Non-English language spoken).
SULLIVAN: This man, Ahmad Saudi, was interviewed by local news outlet Detik Kalimantan. He says he was asleep on the ship when people began running by waking him. And when he stood up, he found the ferry already listing sharply. He says he clung to a window and held on as the ferry continued to roll, then leaped off into a lifeboat. He says he and more than a dozen others spent three hours in the boat until being rescued.
While authorities originally said the ship had sunk, it still remains afloat, though partially submerged. And the head of the national search and rescue agency said an attempt could be made to try to enter the vessel to find survivors who might be trapped inside.
For NPR News, I'm Michael Sullivan in Chiang Rai.
(SOUNDBITE OF ROEDELIUS & TIM STORY'S "CONCISE") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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