Drone firm CEO named suspect in deadly Indonesia office fire

The CEO of PT Terra Drone Indonesia has been named a suspect in a fire that killed 22 employees at the company’s Jakarta office on December 9.

PT Terra Drone Indonesia is a subsidiary of Japan-based Terra Drone Corp, which provides drone services for aerial mapping across industries.

Central Jakarta Police said the CEO, identified as Michael W W Siagian, was detained on suspicion of negligence, and further suspects may be named.

The parent company said it has not been able to confirm the arrest and is cooperating with authorities.

The fire occurred at the company’s mid-rise building in the Kemayoran area of central Jakarta.

🔗 Source: Bloomberg

🧠 Food for thought

Implications, context, and why it matters.

Terra Drone Indonesia runs farm drone work, including a fertilizer program over 60,000 hectares of palm oil plantations in Kalimantan and Bangka Belitung through its Terra Agri service with SMART Tbk, an Indonesian palm oil producer 1.
It delivers surveying, mapping, and inspection, with a pilot at Bandung Institute of Technology (Indonesia’s leading technical university) using a Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) drone for underground utility mapping 2.
Under a 2025 partnership, about 120 in-house agricultural drones will go to PT Yanmar Diesel Indonesia (the local unit of machinery maker Yanmar), and Terra Drone expects minimal impact on fiscal year (FY) 2025 consolidated results 3.

Indonesia recently arrested its deputy minister of manpower in an occupational safety and health (K3) certification extortion case 4. The case made clear the government is tightening compliance and taking on corruption in the certification process, a shift that precedes tougher enforcement.
Firms with 100+ employees or high‑risk profiles must run K3 Management Systems 4. Work accident claims to BPJS Ketenagakerjaan (Indonesia’s national workers’ social security agency) rose 25% from 370,000 in 2023 to about 462,000 in 2024 4, a sign of awareness and reporting.
Fire safety tech vendors can act with Internet of Things (IoT) fire detection, real-time monitoring dashboards, and automated compliance reporting. These tools cut paperwork as rules require full K3 documentation, training records, and reporting mechanisms 5 that manual systems handle poorly.