January 27, 1981 (Tuesday)
- Tampomas II disaster: 580 people drowned when the Indonesian passenger ferry KM Tampomas II sank in the Java Sea during a storm. Of 1,136 onboard(sic), 566 were rescued, including 152 who were found in lifeboats days afterward. Operated by the Pelni line, the ship was a roll-on/roll-off (ro-ro) ferryboat that had caught fire midway through its voyage from Jakarta to Makassar. The fire was extinguished, but the engines failed and the ship was adrift and awaiting a rescue when a storm arose. Before the ship could be fully evacuated, it capsized, going completely beneath the waters at 1:42 in the afternoon Central Indonesian time (0542 GMT).
Read more about this topic: January 1981
Famous quotes containing the word january:
“and you undid the reins
and I undid the buttons,
the bones, the confusions,
The New England postcards,
the January ten o’clock night,
and we rose up like wheat....”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)