Indonesian rescue teams found alive, on Tuesday (15), 11 missing people in the sea that survived the wreck of a boat due to bad weather, swimming for at least six hours to the nearest island, authorities reported.
Two boats and dozens of rescue teams were looking for the missing after the boat with 18 people on board turned near the Mentawai Islands in Western Sumatra province, around 11 am on Monday (14), regional officials reported.
“It was raining hard when the incident happened,” the island officer, Rinto Wardana, told Reuters news agency. “Some of the passengers managed to swim and get to the nearest island.”
Seven people had already been rescued, Wardana added. Ten of those on board were local government officials on a business trip to the city of Tuapejat, the destination of the boat by leaving Sikakap, another small town on the Mentawai islands.
Mentawai islands are composed of four main islands and many other smaller.
Boats and an archipelago with more than 17,000 islands, where accidents are caused by bad weather and weak safety standards, which often allow vessels to be overwhelmed.
When a ferry sank this month near Bali’s tourist island with 65 people on board, 30 passengers survived while 18 died and 17 disappeared.
