Club owner's growth plans felled in one stroke

Club owner's growth plans felled in one stroke

Devi Asmarani, The Straits Times, Asia News Network, Kuta, Bali

Minutes before his popular Paddy's club was struck by a bomb here
last Saturday night, I Gde Wiratha, 55, was in one of his hotels
some 5 km away, holding talks on his company's plan to launch
Bali's first airline later this month.

At around this time too, his brother and business partner, I
Made Wiranatha, was getting ready to leave to shoot Kuta's
clubbing scene for the fledgling airline's promotional video for
the launch on Oct. 27.

The first of two aircraft of the newly set up Air Paradise
International (API) were scheduled to arrive in the resort island
for trial flights last Thursday.

Another aircraft was supposed to leave for Bali from Australia
on the day of the launch on Oct. 27.

But all these had been put off by the bomb that hit Paddy's at
around 11:30 p.m. that Saturday, followed seconds later by a
massive car bomb that tore off the jam-packed Sari Club across
the street.

Nearly 200 people, mostly tourists, were killed, and hundreds
more injured, in the blasts and the fires that followed.

Nine bodies had been found at the Paddy's blast site, although
none of them were the club's employees.

Only three of the 60 Paddy's crew working that night, suffered
serious injuries, with one of them already discharged by the
hospital - a fact that he attributed to a miracle.

Wiratha said some of Paddy's customers might have been struck
by the second blast as they were fleeing the club after the first
explosion.

Yet he said these numbers could have been higher, had the
bombing occurred an hour or two later when the crowd would have
been massive.

"If it happened at one or two in the morning, there could be
over a thousand people in these bars," he told The Sunday Times.

Crowds would usually pack the Kuta night clubs until around
2am before they move on to the famous Double Six or Gado-Gado
discotheques which open until daylight. Both clubs are also owned
by Wiratha.

Three of his hotels are located near the bombing site.

One of them is the Bounty Hotel, hundreds of metres behind the
Sari Club, where 53 of its all-Australian guests are missing.

During the chaotic moments after the blasts, this hotel was
used as a safe refuge for victims before they were taken to the
hospitals as it was the only hotel with lights from the
generator.

Bodies and injured victims, many without limbs, were strewn
across the parking lot and the swimming pool area, he said.

In one deadly stroke, the blast hit his business group's
expansion plans.

In the immediate aftermath of the bombing, thousands of
tickets booked for the API's Australia-Bali flights were
canceled, he said.

His plans to operate another carrier, the Paradise Air
Indonesia, to serve Europe, the United States and South-east
Asia, next year, are also now on hold.

The bombing also affected his plan to run a fleet of six
cruise ships for eastern Indonesian next year.

Wiratha, one of the handful of successful locals in the
tourism industry on the island, appeared sad that the blast has
hit his business empire that ranges from hotels, restaurants,
nightclubs, garment company to cab companies, which he had built
over the years from virtually nothing.

But the businessman, who studied architecture at the Udayana
University, is optimistic that tourists would be back holidaying
in Bali in six months' time.

"We have shown the world that we are peace-loving people.

"Instead of retaliating against certain groups, we have been
praying and helping the victims," he said.

"With stepped up security, everyone would know that Bali is a
safe place," he added.