Lake Toba

A ferry across Lake Toba in North Sumatra sank on Monday in bad weather and a reported 192 are missing and feared dead. Only 18 survivors have been rescued. Rescuers looking for additional survivors have been hampered by high winds and rain. The ferry’s legal capacity is reported to have been between 43 and 60 passengers, depending on the sources, with a comparable number of personal floatation devices (PFDs) aboard. 

Lake Toba is a popular tourist destination and at 450m (1,500ft) deep one of the deepest lakes in the world. The lake was created by an ancient volcano eruption. Ferries run between a scenic island in the middle and towns on the shore.

Sadly, Indonesia, a country of some 18,000 islands, has one of the world’s worst ferry safety records.  In their paper — Trends, Causal Analysis, and Recommendations from 14 Years of Ferry Accidents, by Abigail S. Golden and Roberta E. Weisbrod of the Worldwide Ferry Safety Association, identify human error, weather, and overloading as the three most common causes of ferry accidents. In the tragedy in Lake Toba, initial reporting suggests that all three factors may have played a role. 

Thanks to Alaric Bond for contributing to this post.