Liputan6.com, Pangkalan Bun Yesterday was a major success for joint SAR team as the recovery of both AirAsia QZ8501 Flight Data Recorder (FDR) and Cockpit Voice Recorded (CVR) has been confirmed. Despite the widespread of relief and contentment, the team still views the mission as incomplete. For them, the recent findings ought not to stop them involving authorities from continuing the search of what was left from the aircraft. Thus, SAR joint team is now altering their focus on finding other equally important objects and the passengers who might be trapped underneath the muddy tracks of the bottom of the Java Sea near the Karimata Strait. One of their current missions is to locate the body of the aircraft which might be the object trapping many of the hitherto unfound passengers.
"Starting from this morning, the focus will be predominantly underwater. Unlike previous endeavours, our focus is now to locate the body of the plane as we assume that many passengers were buried under it," The Operational Director and training of Basarnas SB Supriyadi said at the main post Lanud Iskandar, Pangkalan Bun, Central Kalimantan, Wednesday (14/01/2015).
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He shares how the furthering of the mission is an act to fulfil the wishes of the victims’ families. Attempting to locate the body of the aircraft means there will be more efforts that should be exerted as the size is relatively big. The authority found it difficult to lift the tail part of the aircraft earlier, and now they are better prepared for the larger part of aircraft. The power of the tools used to lift the body part of the aircraft will have to be a lot stronger than the ones used (balloons) for dragging the tail part.
"We are currently equipped with 5 ships with 70 personnel on board. We are continuing the search and evacuation mission," Supriyadi informed.
Different to previous claims informing the search and evacuation primary mission to end within 3 to 4 days as said yesterday, Supriyadi tells how the length of time that will be spent on the continuation of the mission relies heavily on the President’s decision.
"We are waiting for the government’s decision as to this decision. In this case, the President himself," Supriyadi concluded. (Ein)