Video: Fire and Explosion in Indonesian Shipyard Kills Three Workers

A fire and subsequent explosion rocked an Indonesia shipyard on the island of Borneo. Three workers at the shipyard were killed. 

The fire appears to have broken out on the dock or a fuel barge that was astern of an LPG tanker that was at the PT Barokah Galangan Perkasa shipyard on the Mahakam River in Samarinda, which is in the province of East Kalimantan in western Indonesia. The 32-year-old Indonesian flagged LPG tanker Grace V was in the shipyard for repairs. It has a capacity of 1970 m2 of gas but was not loaded at the time. 

 

Detail of the accident are vague but an eyewitness told the Indonesian media that they had seen smoke followed by a series of explosions that were heard in a radius of more than 500 yards from the shipyard. Debris was also reportedly seen flying from the yard during the explosions. Some Indonesian media reports imply that the fire might have also spread to the tanker.

A joint SAR team from the national search and rescue agency Basarnas along with the East Kalimantan Police, and the Indonesian Navy responded to the scene. “I don’t know if it was caused by short circuit, negligence, or because of the heat,” a spokesman told the Kaltim Today news outlet. They said the cause of the fire remained under investigation.

Three individuals working at the shipyard were reported to be missing after the explosion and fire. The search teams later reported finding three bodies in the river believed to be the workers.