PANGKALAN BUN, Jan 3 – UNTIL Indonesia AirAsia Flight QZ8501 crashed in the shallow sea off the Kalimantan coastline, most outsiders came to Pangkalan Bun as the step-off point to visit orang utans at Tanjung Puting National Park. Now, the area is swarming with journalists and military officials and is a babble of unfamiliar tongues.
It has been five days since the Airbus A320 went down with 162 on board and while rescuers have closed in on the jet and more than two dozen bodies have been recovered, Indonesia’s crack navy divers are chafing at the bad weather that has prevented them from locating the precise crash site.
“We have 90 divers on standby,” Lieutenant Edy Tirtayasa, commander of Team Kopaska, the elite diving unit deployed to Pangkalan Bun, told The Straits Times.
