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strong>Nov. 21, p5

After questioning dozens of witnesses, the Manado Police in North Sulawesi have named a local businessman a suspect in connection to a recent fire at the Inul Vizta karaoke club that claimed the lives of 12 people.

'€œOur investigators have named the owner of Inul Vizta [Manado], David Joscom, a suspect in the case. The suspect is charged with negligence and [failure to provide] proper safety facilities in the building,'€ Manado Police chief Sr. Comr. Rio Permana told The Jakarta Post on Friday.

Manado Police criminal investigation unit head Comr. Esron Sinaga, meanwhile, said the police would charge David with violating Article 359 of the Criminal Code (KUHP) on negligence resulting in death, which carries a maximum punishment of five years in prison.

Esron said the investigation into the deadly incident was still ongoing. '€œThis is not final. If we get new evidence, we might get new suspects,'€ he said, adding that the police had so far questioned 23 witnesses.

Your comments:

The power went out and then came back on a minute later. Look, it'€™s PLN. How about when it came back on, there was a surge and the overload from the producer of the power in fact caused the fire? It is a possibility.

If I were the owner I would be hiring a non-related company to come and place some meters on various power boxes around the area and measure to see if the power surges when it comes back on. If sometimes it does, then the owner could put the blame on the real criminal. Shouldn'€™t it take a long time to find the answers with all the outages that occur? Like the outage I'€™m having right now.

Simaging

Power surges are indeed quite a valid point. Just around 1 1/2 months ago an unobserved power surge happened during the night in one of my offices that caused quite some damage to electronic equipment, particularly various chargers (e.g. for laptops, monitors, phones, Walkie-Talkies, etc.), which were fried by the surge and had to be replaced, same as a fridge in the canteen, two projectors, one amplifier, the CCTV recording unit, two air conditioners and some emergency lights.

Repair/replacement costs went into a few millions that nobody is going to cover. While there was no fire, it could well have happened in this particular case. We have now installed a power regulator that will hopefully do its job well next time such a surge happens (and I am sure it will).

Gordon Freeman

PLN Sumatra should be charged for violating Article 359 of the Criminal Code (KUHP) on negligence resulting in death, which carries a maximum punishment of five years in prison. Many people have died in fires because of outages, as well as loss of homes, etc.

Yet, day after day, PLN refuses to publish a schedule for outages, refuses to seek solutions to the problem. Yes, PLN, specifically in Bandar Lampung, is negligent and has caused loss of life and property.

Willo1246

There must at least have been some insurance pay-outs because of that, i.e. accidental incident life insurance. Any knowledge of how the insurance companies deal with PLN to make them partly liable?

Kelapa

You'€™d have better chances talking to Jendral Sudirman on Jl. Sudirman than getting power companies to take responsibility.

Dinero