Emergency responders in Indonesia were struggling to find a Brazilian woman who fell off a cliff while hiking around the nation’s second-highest volcano at the weekend, officials said yesterday, as rescue efforts entered a fourth day.
Juliana Marins, 27, was walking with five friends on Mount Rinjani on Saturday when she slipped and fell off a cliff on the side of the 3,726m mountain, head of local rescuers Muhammad Hariyadi said.
The active volcano in West Nusa Tenggara Province is a popular tourist site in the Southeast Asian archipelago.
Photo: EPA
Marins fell off a cliff on the mountain, but not into the volcano crater, Hariyadi said.
Fifty people were involved in the rescue.
“We are in the process of going down there... It is very steep, so very difficult for us to reach her,” Hariyadi said, adding that soft sand in the area made it difficult to retrieve her using ropes and that a helicopter was on its way to the site.
He said Marins, who was located on Saturday, was slipping further on the sandy terrain of the cliff face. She was at a depth of 150m when first discovered, but had slipped to 500m by Monday morning, he added.
As of yesterday, rescuers were still struggling to get down the cliff.
“There was also thick fog on the site that made it even more difficult,” Hariyadi said.
Rescuers have not been able to confirm whether Marins is still alive. Drone footage showed that she was not moving, Hariyadi said.
Indonesian Minister of Forestry Raja Juli Antoni in a statement said that the Mount Rinjani hiking track would be closed to ease the evacuation effort, and out of respect to Marins and her family.
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