Ferry Fire in Java Sea Kills Five, Leaves 41 Missing
The ferry Mutiara Sentosa 2, carrying 271 people, caught fire on the Surabaya to Makassar route. Rescuers pulled 225 from the water as nine ships helped evacuate; the cause is still unknown.
The passenger ferry Mutiara Sentosa 2 caught fire on Sunday morning in the Java Sea, on its regular route from Surabaya in East Java to Makassar in South Sulawesi. Indonesia’s Search and Rescue Agency reported that five people were killed, 41 are still listed as missing, and 225 of the 271 passengers and crew on board have been rescued. A fire on a domestic ferry route is not just a story about a distant archipelago: for a traveler from Serbia island hopping through Southeast Asia, the local ferry is the basic way to get around, and these routes do not go through the kind of inspections European ports carry out on ships in their own waters.
The fire broke out between 6 and 7 a.m. local time, or between 1 and 2 a.m. Belgrade time, a few hours after the ship left Surabaya. There were 232 passengers and 39 crew members on board, and the vessel belonged to the company PT Atosim Lampung Pelayaran.
An Hour Between the First Report and the Alarm
The captain radioed the operator that the ship was on fire, and the Tanjung Perak port authority passed the report on to the rescue service in Surabaya only at 8:24 a.m. Contact with the ferry was lost soon after, and its position became unknown.
Its position was recovered thanks to a cargo ship. The Meratus Project 3 reported at 9:45 a.m. that the ferry was almost completely engulfed in flames, about 19 nautical miles north of Sapudi island, off the northern coast of Madura, in the Sumenep area. According to that report, passengers and crew were gathering on the bridge and at the bow, waiting for help.
“The ship caught fire north of Sapudi island. The first reports said there were 250 people on board,” said Nanang Sigit, head of the Search and Rescue Office in Surabaya.
Why Couldn’t Rescuers Reach the Ship Right Away?
The first ship to reach the scene could not carry out the evacuation, because it was itself carrying flammable cargo, and pulling up alongside the burning hull would have put two vessels at risk instead of one. A rubber boat sent from a nearby rescue post turned back because of rough seas and high waves, while a ship dispatched from Surabaya needed about six hours to reach the site. Indonesia’s navy sent a warship.
By 10:20 a.m., some passengers had started jumping into the sea. They were pulled out of the water by ships that had gathered around the ferry in the meantime.
According to the Surabaya office, nine vessels shared the work of evacuation:
- Meratus Pematang Siantar, 111 evacuated, including two bodies
- TB Hasnur 26, 65 survivors and one body
- Transco Arafura, 17 survivors
- Meratus Project 13, 13 survivors and one body
- Prakarsa Mas, seven survivors
- SC Aila XVII, seven survivors
- Selaras Mas, seven survivors
- British Mentor, two survivors
- Alcon Daniel, one body
“The ship Meratus Pematang Siantar rescued the largest number of survivors, evacuating 111 people,” Sigit said, adding that the vessel was due to rendezvous with a rescue agency ship from Surabaya.
Numbers That Shifted Throughout the Day
The first official estimate put around 250 people on board, while the list the agency later confirmed put the number at 271. That gap of roughly twenty names is not an administrative detail, since it determines how many people are still being searched for. By 6 p.m. local time, 232 people had been evacuated, five deaths had been confirmed, and 41 people remained unaccounted for.
A Disaster That Keeps Repeating in Indonesia
Indonesia has more than 17,000 islands, and maritime accidents on these routes are a regular occurrence, with weak enforcement of safety rules and overcrowded ships lacking sufficient rescue equipment. In July 2025, a ferry sank on its way to Bali, killing four and leaving dozens missing. In July 2023, a shipwreck off Sulawesi killed fifteen people.
Indonesia’s Transport Ministry said passenger and crew safety was a priority and that it was coordinating with relevant agencies to ensure the evacuation was carried out quickly.
The cause of the fire has not been determined. An investigation is expected only once the rescue operation is over, which means the first answer on what caught fire, cargo or the engine room, will come only after the list of missing people is closed. The search continued into Sunday evening.
