Hendrik Mulyadi was checking his crab traps when he heard a huge explosion on the water nearby. The sea suddenly rose, lifting the Indonesian fisherman’s boat as smoke filled the air.
"I’m lucky it didn’t hit me,” he recalled Monday, sitting at his home on Lancang Island and still visibly shaken by what he saw. "It was like lightning, very fast. It exploded when it hit the water. I saw debris floating. It was airplane debris.”
Hendrik, 30, was one of five crab fishermen who were out working on the water Saturday afternoon when Sriwijaya Air Flight 182 fell from the sky minutes after takeoff with 62 people on board, 10 of them children and babies. The plane crashed into the Java Sea, about 300 feet (91 meters) from where Hendrik was fishing.