riday, September 26, 1997
Officials probe whether haze caused
Indonesia crash
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) -- An Indonesian jetliner with 234 people
aboard crashed Friday in an area of Sumatra that has been shrouded in
smoke from hundreds of forest fires.
Officials were checking if the thick haze over Southeast Asia was a cause.
Rescue teams picked through the smoking wreckage for any signs of
survivors, and by nightfall the bodies of 212 people had been located in the
lush, rugged terrain, airline official John Pieter said. No survivors were
found.
The bodies were to be removed today, when the search for other victims
and the airplane's flight recorders resumed.
Indonesia, spread along the equator and comprising about 17,500 islands,
relies heavily on air transport.
The plane that crashed was a Garuda Airlines A-300B4 Airbus.
Authorities stressed that the cause of the crash had not been determined.
The dense haze has disrupted air traffic and forced airports to close
because of dangerously low visibility.
On Friday, rescue teams said the smoke prevented them from flying
helicopters to the crash site, 30 kilometres west of Medan's Polonia
Airport, 1,400 kilometres northwest of Jakarta.
The 15-year-old twin-engine plane had been on a flight from Jakarta to the
Sumatra island city of Medan, where some of the worst fires have been
smouldering for months.
The official Antara news agency said the plane descended into the haze as
it prepared to land at Medan.
Antara reported that radar contact was lost eight minutes after the pilot
had radioed for guidance for his final approach. The plane crashed at 1:55
p.m. local time, an airline official said.
Officials quoted witnesses as saying the plane was flying low in the haze
when it hit a tree and crashed into pieces. Some witnesses told Anteve
television that they heard an explosion just before impact.
"The weather conditions were OK for landing, but there was smoke haze
around Medan at the time," Communications Minister Haryanto Danutirto
said.
Airport officials declined to say whether the aircraft had been on a visual
or instrument approach, or what the visibility was at the time of the crash.
The plane was carrying some foreigners. There were six Japanese, three
Germans, two Americans, one Dutch and at least one Malaysian, the airline
said. The rest were Indonesians.
Residents in Medan said the haze was the worst they had seen since the
severe pollution started two months ago. Many people remained indoors
Friday because it was difficult to breathe, said Ching Ting Lien, an editor of
a local newspaper.
Many of the fires have been deliberately lit by forest companies and
plantation owners wanting to clear land cheaply. A drought blamed on the
El Nino weather system has delayed the monsoon rains and allowed the
fires to burn fiercely for weeks.
Garuda, Indonesia's largest state-owned airline, cancelled several flights to
Medan after the crash, citing poor visibility. However, airport officials said
other airlines continued to use the airport Friday night.
Airbus Industrie, the manufacturer of the A-300B4 Airbus, said the plane
involved in Friday's crash had been delivered to Garuda in November
1982.
Friday's accident was Indonesia's third major airline crash this year.
On July 17, a Dutch-built Sempati Air Fokker commuter plane crashed
near a housing complex on the island of Java, killing 27 people.
Fifteen people were killed when a British-made ATP turboprop plane
flown by the state-run Merpati Nusantara airline crashed off Sumatra on
April 19.
On June 13, 1996, a Garuda DC-10 failed to take off properly in
Fukuoka, Japan, skidded to a stop in a field and burst into flames, killing
three people and injuring 100.
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