River Tragedy Repeats

BASARNAS

The process of evacuating students from Madrasah Tsanawiyah Harapan Baru, Ciamis Regency, West Java, who drowned while participating in the Cileueur River cruising activity in Wetan Hamlet, Main Village, Cijeunjing District, Ciamis, Friday (15/10/2021).

Indonesian education has been plunged back into mourning after the deaths of students in a school outdoor activity-turned-disaster in Ciamis, West Java, which came a year after a similar incident in Yogyakarta killed ten students.

BANDUNG, KOMPAS — As many as 11 students of Madrasah Tsanawiyah Harapan Baru in Ciamis regency, West Java, drowned while participating in a Cileueur River trek in Wetan hamlet, Utama village, Cijeunjing district, on Friday (10/15/2021), at around 3 p.m.

Two students were injured and treated at the Ciamis Regional General Hospital.

Memet Hikmat, who heads the emergency and logistics division of the Regional Disaster Mitigation Agency (BPBD) of Ciamis, said the victims had been found within a radius of 20 meters from the believed location of the drowning.

The deaths consisted of eight male and three female students, with the body of Siti Zahra being the last to be spotted, five hours after the incident.

The other ten victims were Aldo, Fatah, Candra, Alfian, Khansa, Dea Rizki, Aditya, Kafka, Fahrur and Fadzri, while the two survivors under hospital treatment were Yama and Fasa.

"Currently, BPBD personnel and other teams are still at the scene to ensure all survivors have been found. The school is also checking the list of the students," Memet said Friday night.

He said the weather at the scene was quite conducive to the search. The river current was not strong either. The deeper points of the river range from three to five meters. However, because the search was carried out at night, the team was constrained by limited visibility.

“The causes have yet to be ascertained, with the search team still focusing on evacuating the victims to the Ciamis Hospital,” he said.

The school’s river trek was attended by 150 students. According to Memet, the participants did not wear life jackets during the activities.

“We don't know yet how many supervisors monitored the students in this activity. However, if there were 150 participants, adequate supervision was needed in such an outdoor activity,” he said.

In addition to the regional disaster mitigation agency, the search involved teams from the National Search and Rescue Agency (Basarnas), the Indonesian Red Cross (PMI), Tagana Ciamis, the Indonesian Military (TNI) and the police.

In the search for the victims, the teams swept the riverbanks and the water aboard rubber boats.

BASARNAS

The process of evacuating students from Madrasah Tsanawiyah Harapan Baru, Ciamis Regency, West Java, who drowned while participating in the Cileueur River cruising activity in Wetan Hamlet, Main Village, Cijeunjing District, Ciamis, Friday (15/10/2021).

Ciamis Regent Herdiat Sunarya expressed his condolences to the victims and their loved ones. "We are deeply saddened. Hopefully there will be no more victims," he said.

Outdoor scouting was said to be a regular activity for the school’s students. It seemed everything had gone well until the organizers learned that a number of students had not returned at the end of activities. "In the search, 11 students were found dead," he said.

Ciamis police head Adjutant Agung Wahyu Broto said they were still looking into the incident for the causes. “They were the first group of the participants and were swept straight away. We have yet to conclude what the cause was," he said.

However, according to local residents, the river is deep enough to allow for fairly strong currents to occur nonetheless.

At the time of the incident, the surface of the river was relatively calm. However, according to local residents, the river is deep enough to allow for fairly strong currents to occur nonetheless.

“We had not received a notification on the planned river trekking activity. We only learned about the activity upon receiving reports about the students drowning," he said.

Repeated mishap

The Ciamis river trekking tragedy has echoed a similar fatal incident in Sleman regency, Yogyakarta, in February of last year.

The Sempor River scouting event, which was organized by SMPN 1 Turi junior high school in Sleman, turned disastrous when ten students died and five others were injured in abrupt flash floods.

In the aftermath of the incident, three of the school’s teachers were sentenced to 1.5 years in prison by the Sleman District Court for negligence. (TAM/WHY)

(This article was translated by Musthofid).