Eight killed in Cikampek toll road inferno

JAKARTA (JP): Eight passengers were killed and eight others seriously injured yesterday when a speeding 12-seat van burst into flames on the Cikampek toll road, West Java.

The fire was extinguished in about 20 minutes and the vehicle did not explode.

All passengers, including three children, were going to a wedding in Babakan, in Kuningan, Cirebon. They had left Jakarta from Pancoran, South Jakarta.

A two-year-old child was among the dead. As of yesterday afternoon none of their families had arrived at the Karya Husada hospital in Karawang. The bodies were scorched and hard to identify but hospital staff had identified all but the two-year- old.

One of the bodies was found standing with its right arm reaching out the window of the ill-fated Mitsubishi L 300 van. The found remains include small bones and a piece of a hand.

A patrol officer said that around 9 a.m. the chartered van, driven by Nurhadi, hit the left shoulder of the road at the 61.4 kilometer mark of the toll road.

"The incident was probably caused by the van's drive shaft snapping," Sgt. Major Herry Togas said.

Togas was driving a kilometer behind the van and witnessed the accident. He said he could do nothing. He arrived a few minutes after the van stopped but flames were coming out of the van.

Togas said a spark caused by the scraping of the drive shaft against the asphalt started the fire which spread to the fuel tank.

The drive shaft probably broke because the van, carrying 16 people, was overloaded. The van was a 1984-1986 make, he said.

At the hospital, Nurhadi said he had not sensed anything wrong with the van when the shaft snapped.

"The fire sparked all of a sudden in the rear seat. I pulled over to the left and got out of the burning van," Nurhadi, who had minor injuries, said.

He pulled two passengers, both of them adults, out of the van.

Patrol police said the accident was more likely to have been caused by the car's condition and speeding than the road's condition as the weather was good.

Togas said the dead included five women: Sarmada, Nani, Noni, Mirna, Alia, and the unidentified child.

The men were Nashari and Arie.

The eight survivors were Nurhadi, 55, Asnari, 37, Aisyah, 56, Irmawati, 10, Reza, 8, Yahya, 34, M. Rais, and Casnadi, 27.

Dedy, the hospital's radiology expert, said most of the survivors had 20 to 40 percent burns.

"Only Nurhadi, the driver, was lucky enough to have less than 20 percent burns." Irmawati and Reza had over 40 percent burns, Dedy said.

Irmawati said she had refused to go to the wedding, scheduled for last night, but her mother, Sarmada, insisted she go.

Neither Irmawati nor Reza, whose parents Arie and Mirna were killed, had been told they were orphans yesterday.

In tears, she asked doctors: "Where is my mother?"

Nurhadi said he was paid Rp 200,000 (US$83.33) by a relative of Noni, to drive her and her relatives to Kuningan for her son's wedding. (jun/04)