The wreckage lay about 700 meters from where Indonesia’s transport safety agency, the KNKT, had expected to find it. Rescuers reached it on Wednesday afternoon in the dense forest near Mandin Damar Waterfall in Tanah Bumbu district, South Kalimantan. The Eastindo Air helicopter had vanished three days earlier.
It was destroyed and burned.
The BK117-D3, registered PK-RGH, was flying from Kotabaru to Palangkaraya when it lost contact on Monday morning. Eight people were aboard. Three were foreigners: Mark Werren of the United States, Santa Kumar of India and Claudine Quito of Brazil. The rest were Indonesian.
At 3:53 p.m. local time, searchers recovered one body about 100 meters from the aircraft. “The victim has been body-packed and prepared for evacuation to the field post,” said First Admiral Yudhi Bramantyo, operations director at Basarnas, the search and rescue agency, at a press briefing that night.
Whether anyone else is still in the helicopter is not yet known. The fire left little of the fuselage intact, and Yudhi said crews would have to take it apart to keep looking. “The exact number has not been confirmed, as the aircraft burned extensively, requiring dismantling to continue the search,” he said.
Basarnas teams, the military, police, regional disaster agencies and local volunteers are all at the site, working to recover victims and secure the area.
