Dio Suhenda, Jakarta – Rescuers have recovered the remains of six people from the site of a SAM Air plane crash in Yalimo regency, Papua Highlands, as authorities focus their efforts on identifying the victims.
The airplane crashed on Friday just seven minutes after taking off from Elelim Airport in Yalimo. Manned by pilots Hari Permadi and Levi Murib, the plane was carrying four passengers to Poik village, also in the regency. There were no survivors.
The head of the Jayapura Search and Rescue (SAR) Operations Office, Marinus Ohoirat, said that a joint team consisting of six operatives and six military personnel had managed to retrieve the six bodies and would fly them back in body bags to Wamena, a 15-minute helicopter ride away from the crash site, on Tuesday.
"The joint search-and-rescue team will take the bodies of the victims by helicopter from the crash site to Wamena. After that, the victims will be flown to Jayapura to be identified by the Papua Police's disaster victim identification [DVI] team," Marinus said, as quoted by Kompas.id.
Local media reported that the plane carrying the remains of the victims arrived in Jayapura on Tuesday afternoon, greeted by grieving family members and employees of SAM Air who were waiting at the airport.
The head of the Papua Police's medical and health division, Sr. Comr. Nariyana, said on Tuesday that it would take up to two weeks to identify the victims as they had been severely burned.
"Identification will probably use a DNA examination method. We are deploying 30 personnel from the Papua Police DVI team to identify the victims' remains," Nariyana said, as quoted by Kompas.com.
SAM Air president director Wagus Hidayat, who was present at the Jayapura Airport press conference, expressed his condolences to the families of the victims, promising that the company would do everything it could to assist in the identification process.
"SAM Air will facilitate all the families of the victims in submitting antemortem data to the Papua Police DVI team. We will also prepare refrigeration facilities to store the victims' bodies," he said.
Meanwhile, Dani Eldo, a member of the National Transportation Safety Committee (KNKT), who was also in Jayapura, said that the KNKT had also begun conducting its own investigation into the accident, particularly since the plane's black box had yet to be found.
"A total of three KNKT staff will investigate the cause of the SAM Air plane crash. We have collected some preliminary data relating to this incident," Dani said.
The remote and mountainous region of Papua is notoriously dangerous for air travel, having been the site of many accidents in the past.