The Jakarta Globe, March 7, 2014.
Jakarta. A legislator has urged an immediate safety audit of all military munitions depots, after a blast at a facility in North Jakarta on Wednesday left one soldier dead and 87 other people injured.
Tubagus Hasanuddin, a deputy chairman of the House of Representatives’ commission on defense and foreign affairs, said in Jakarta on Thursday that the Indonesian Military (TNI) still operated many aging depots like the one at Tanjung Priok.
“The cause of the explosion was an electrical short circuit in the building, which was more than 100 years old,” said Hasanuddin, a former Army general. “I don’t know off the top of my head just how many there are, but the TNI is still using many munitions depots like this that date back to the Dutch colonial administration.
“Our first priority should be to treat those injured in Wednesday’s incident. Our second priority should be to renovate these buildings, because they’re old.”
A Navy personnel, identified as First Sergeant Imam Syafi’i, was killed in the blast at the Navy’s munitions depot in Tanjung Priok on Wednesday.
The blast occurred at 10:30 a.m., injuring 87 of the Navy and police personnel in the vicinity. The explosion, which sent a thik plume of black smoke into the air, was caused by a fire suspected to have been sparked by an electrical short circuit.
The blast caused extensive damage to the wooden building, which is also the site of a training complex for the Navy’s underwater demolitions unit and next to a station of the Jakarta Police’s maritime unit.
Hasanuddin, from the opposition Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), said a renovation of the munitions depot should have been included in plans to expand the naval base in Tanjung Priok.
“We’ll check to see how far along in those plans the TNI has gone. We hope that they can build a better depot,” he said at Mintoharjo Navy Hospital in North Jakarta during a visit to those injured in the blast.
Admiral Marestio, the Navy chief of staff, attributed the force of the blast to the presence of TNT in the depot.
He said on Wednesday that the depot typically held small arms munitions, including for handguns and rifles, but also stored explosives from ships docking there, although he did not say in what form.
“What happened was that the fire [cased by the short circuit] spread to the munitions, including the TNT, which set off the explosion,” he said.
He added that investigators were looking into what kind of explosives were involved and in what amount.
Police are also aiding in the investigation, and have sent their bomb disposal squad to the location.
He also emphasized that there was no indication of sabotage, calling the incident purely an accident.
“Sabotage was absolutely not a factor in this incident. It was all just an accident,” Marestio said.
He said Navy personnel had spotted a cloud of white smoke in the depot shortly before the blast and tried to extinguish the fire.
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vr 7 maa 2014 - 3:29