REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, PANGKALAN BUN -- The Indonesian Red Cross (PMI) has sent additional personnel to Pangkalan Bun in Central Kalimantan to help recover the bodies of victims of the AirAsia flight that crashed in Karimata Strait.
"We are going to pick up our colleagues from Jakarta who arrived at the airport today. I don't know their number," a spokesman for the PMI Secretariat in West Kotawaringin district, Bambang, said on Monday (5/1).
The PMI Secretariat is used as a command post as it is located opposite the Sultan Imanuddin Regional General Hospital (RSUD) in Pangkalan Bun.
PMI members have been engaged in the search for the bodies of AirAsia crash victims.
According to the PMI Secretariat, 74 PMI members and volunteers coordinating with the PMI branch are lending a hand to the search efforts.
Moreover, Head of the National Search and Rescue Agency (Basarnas) Vice Marshal F. Henry Bambang Soelistyo affirmed earlier in the day that 31 bodies of AirAsia crash victims had been found and recovered so far.
AirAsia flight QZ8501 carrying 162 people on board went missing on December 28 en route from Surabaya, East Java, to Singapore.
The ill-fated plane is believed to have crashed in the Java Sea near Karimata Strait, some 95 nautical miles from Pangkalan Bun, Central Kalimantan.
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