KM Prince Soya Burns in Samarinda Port, Passenger Service is Assured Not to be Interrupted

SAMARINDA - The Samarinda Class I City Hall and Port Authority (KSOP) ensures that the burning of the Prince Soya Motor Boat will not disrupt the smooth flow of passenger maritime transportation.

"We immediately took comprehensive mitigation steps so that the sailing schedule of thousands of passengers would not be stranded due to this incident," said the Head of the Shipping Safety Section of the Samarinda Class I KSOP, Yuliansyah in Samarinda, Saturday, August 1, reported by ANTARA.

The port authority has prepared a scheme to transfer passengers to a replacement ship fleet that has proven to have the appropriate eligibility standards.

This tactical step was taken considering that the ship with a capacity of 1,800 people was scheduled to depart for the cruise route on Sunday at 14.00 WITA.

"All passenger rights who have previously purchased sailing tickets online are still fully met through the fleet that has been alerted," he said.

The emergency fire incident was first detected by the port guard at around 11.02 WITA in the Samarinda Port area, Saturday.

The thick black smoke plume originating from the deck of the ship immediately triggered an emergency response from the joint fire brigade team.

"The guard's actions were very quick to contact the leadership to take quick action in coordination with Pelindo to immediately deploy the fire brigade," said Yuliansyah.

Direct extinguishing efforts were carried out in a coordinated manner by focusing on spraying water on the right deck area of the ship that was emitting fire.

The city government also deployed one unit of a fire truck fleet to support the acceleration of the process of taming the red hero in the pier area.

"For the time being, we have stated that the fire incident was triggered by an indication of an initial problem in a tank containing oil," he explained.

The expert team together with the police are currently conducting a more in-depth investigation to determine the exact cause of the disaster.

It is confirmed that there were no casualties in the accident because the commercial passenger ship was in a reclining and empty condition.

"We will continue to tighten supervision of shipping safety standards after this incident to ensure the safety of all transportation service users," said Yuliansyah.