Hummus Is Conquering America

Tobacco Farmers Open Fields to Chickpeas; A Bumper Crop 

 

Prodded by the largest U.S. hummus maker, farmers in the heart of tobacco country are trying to grow chickpeas, an improbable move that reflects booming demand for hummus.

Sabra Dipping Co., a joint venture of PepsiCo Inc. (PEP) and Israel's Strauss Group Ltd., wants to cultivate a commercial crop in Virginia to reduce its dependence on the legume's main U.S. growing region—the Pacific Northwest—and to identify new chickpea varieties for its dips and spreads.
For Sabra, which makes hummus at a plant near Richmond, Va., a secondary source of supplies could help protect the company if a chickpea shortage occurred because of crop failures in Washington or Idaho. Sourcing chickpeas locally also would lower its shipping costs. But the Virginia effort carries risk, because experts say the state's high summer humidity could prove a significant obstacle to its viability.
"We need to establish the supply chain to meet our growing demand," says Sabra's chief technology officer, Tulin Tuzel. "We want to reduce the risk of bad weather or concentration in one region. If possible, we also want to expand the growing seasons."
Long a staple of Middle Eastern cuisine, hummus is earning a growing following among Americans seeking more-healthful snacks. The chickpea dip is low in fat and high in protein. Sales of "refrigerated flavored spreads"—a segment dominated by hummus—totaled $530 million at U.S. food retailers last year, up 11% from a year earlier and a 25% jump over 2010, according to market-research firm Information Resources Inc.
The growth has caught the attention of big food companies like PepsiCo, which bought a 50% stake in Sabra in 2008, and Kraft Foods Group Inc. (KRFT), which owns Athenos, another big hummus brand. Sabra on Tuesday is expected to announce an $86 million expansion of its hummus plant near Richmond to help meet demand. It expects to add 140 jobs to the facility, which currently employs about 360, over the next few years.
Sabra doesn't disclose financial data, but IRI data show its hummus sales were about $315 million last year, up about 18%. And because some retailers, including Costco Wholesale Corp. (COST), don't provide information to IRI, the figures understate Sabra's retail sales.
Sabra, based in White Plains, N.Y., has helped introduce more Americans to hummus through huge sampling events in major cities in which it has handed out 10,000 2-ounce packages a day. Sabra began its first national television advertising campaign earlier this year.
"Most of the consumers out there still don't know what hummus is," said Adam Carr, chief executive of Tribe Mediterranean Foods Inc., a Sabra rival. "We think that there are going to be lots of new users coming to the category."
Growing demand for hummus has pushed up prices for chickpeas, spurring farmers to increase production. The average price that farmers received for chickpeas was 35 cents a pound last year, a 10-cent increase over the mid-2000s, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Though chickpeas are a tiny crop compared with corn or wheat, last year's U.S. harvest totaled a record 332 million pounds, up 51% from the previous year, according to the USDA. The value of the U.S. chickpea crop hit a record $115.5 million last year, USDA data show.
U.S. farmers are expected to plant a record 214,300 acres of chickpeas this year, up 3% from last year and a fivefold increase over a decade ago, the USDA said. Demand for the U.S. crop from Spain, Turkey and Pakistan also has led farmers to plant more.
In Walla Walla, Wash., farmer Pat McConnell, 51, said he intends this spring to plant about 950 acres with chickpeas, more than double his crop last year. "They've become a pretty lucrative option," he said. "I really think chickpeas are going to continue to grow in popularity."
Virginia officials are eager to develop new crops in a state where tobacco farming has shrunk dramatically since the 1990s because of declining cigarette sales.
Sabra has provided financial support for chickpea research at Virginia State University, and this spring, Virginia State recruited farmers to plant chickpeas in on-farm trials.
But Virginia's summer humidity and heat could make chickpeas more susceptible to a fungus known as Ascochyta blight that long has threatened chickpea crops in the U.S.

Virginia State University agronomist Harbans Bhardwaj is working on identifying a variety more suited to the climate, that could potentially be planted months earlier than most chickpeas. Mr. Bhardwaj thinks Virginia farmers may be able to grow the crop on a commercial scale within three years.

James Brown, a 72-year-old tobacco, corn and soybean farmer in Clover, Va., said he knew nothing about chickpeas when an extension agent from Virginia State called him several months ago and asked if he would plant the legume.
He said he jumped at the opportunity because he is looking for ways to make his roughly 300-acre farm more profitable.
Mr. Brown planted four acres with chickpeas in mid-April. That week, his wife served him the first chickpeas he'd ever eaten. "They tasted pretty good," the farmer said.

U.S. Officials: Evidence From Interrogation Suggests Boston Bombing Suspects Were Motivated by Islam 

 

This combination of undated photos shows Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, left, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19. The FBI says the two brothers and suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing killed an MIT police officer, injured a transit officer in a firefight and threw explosive devices at police during a getaway attempt in a long night of violence that left Tamerlan dead and Dzhokhar still at large on Friday, April 19, 2013. The ethnic Chechen brothers lived in Dagestan, which borders the Chechnya region in southern Russia. They lived near Boston and had been in the U.S. for about a decade, one of their uncles reported said. Credit: AP 

BOSTON (AP) -- The two brothers suspected of bombing the Boston Marathon appear to have been motivated by their religious faith but do not seem connected to any Muslim terrorist groups, U.S. officials said Monday after interrogating the severely wounded younger man. He was charged with federal crimes that could bring the death penalty.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, was charged in his hospital room with using a weapon of mass destruction to kill. He was accused of joining with his older brother, Tamerlan - now dead - in setting off the pressure-cooker bombs that killed three people and wounded more than 200 a week ago.
The brothers, ethnic Chechens from Russia who had been living in the U.S. for about a decade, practiced Islam.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev communicated with his interrogators in writing, a less-than-ideal format that precluded the type of detailed back-and-forth crucial to establishing the facts, said one of two officials who recounted the questioning. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the investigation.
The two officials said the preliminary evidence from an interrogation suggests the Tsarnaev brothers were driven by religion but had no ties to Islamic terrorist organizations.
At the same time, they cautioned that they were still trying to verify what they were told by Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and were looking at such things as his telephone and online communications and his associations with others.
The criminal complaint containing the charges against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev shed no light on the motive.
But it gave a detailed sequence of events and cited surveillance-camera images of him dropping off a knapsack with one of the bombs and using a cellphone, perhaps to coordinate or detonate the blasts.
The Massachusetts college student was listed in serious but stable condition at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center with a gunshot wound to the throat and other injuries. His 26-year-old brother died last week in a fierce gunbattle with police.

"Although our investigation is ongoing, today's charges bring a successful end to a tragic week for the city of Boston and for our country," Attorney General Eric Holder said in a statement.

The charges carry the death penalty or up to life in prison.
"He has what's coming to him," a wounded Kaitlynn Cates said from her hospital room. She was at the finish line when the first blast knocked her off her feet, and she suffered an injury to her lower leg.
In outlining the evidence against him in court papers, the FBI said Tsarnaev was seen on surveillance cameras putting a knapsack down on the ground near the site of the second blast and then manipulating a cellphone and lifting it to his ear.
Seconds later, the first explosion went off about a block down the street and spread fear and confusion through the crowd. But Tsarnaev - unlike nearly everyone around him - looked calm and quickly walked away, the FBI said.
Just 10 seconds or so later, the second blast occurred where he had left the knapsack, the FBI said.
The FBI did not make it clear whether authorities believe he used his cellphone to detonate one or both of the bombs or whether he was talking to someone.
The court papers also said that during the long night of crime Thursday and Friday that led to the older brother's death and the younger one's capture, one of the Tsarnaev brothers told a carjacking victim: "Did you hear about the Boston explosion? I did that."
In addition to the federal charges, the younger Tsarnaev brother is also likely to face state charges in connection with the shooting death of an MIT police officer.
The Obama administration said it had no choice but to prosecute Tsarnaev in the federal court system. Some politicians had suggested he be tried as an enemy combatant in front of a military tribunal, where defendants are denied some of the usual U.S. constitutional protections.
But Tsarnaev is a naturalized U.S. citizen, and under U.S. law, American citizens cannot be tried by military tribunals, White House spokesman Jay Carney said. Carney said that since 9/11, the federal court system has been used to convict and imprison hundreds of terrorists.

In its criminal complaint, the FBI said it searched Tsarnaev's dorm room at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth on Sunday and found BBs as well as a white hat and dark jacket that look like those worn by one of one of the suspected bombers in the surveillance photos the FBI released a few days after the attack.

Seven days after the bombings, meanwhile, Boston was bustling Monday, with runners hitting the pavement, children walking to school and enough cars clogging the streets to make the morning commute feel almost back to normal.
Residents paused in the afternoon to observe a moment of silence at 2:50 p.m., the time of the first blast. Church bells tolled across the city and state in tribute to the victims.
Standing on the steps of the state Capitol, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick bowed his head and said after the moment of silence: "God bless the people of Massachusetts. Boston Strong."

On Boylston Street, where the bombing took place, the silence was broken when a Boston police officer pumped his fists in the air and the crowd erupted in applause. The crowd then quietly sang "God Bless America."

Also, hundreds of family and friends packed a church in Medford for the funeral of bombing victim Krystle Campbell, a 29-year-old restaurant worker. A memorial service was scheduled for Monday night at Boston University for 23-year-old Lu Lingzi, a graduate student from China.
Fifty-one victims remained hospitalized Monday, three of them in critical condition.
At the Snowden International School on Newbury Street, a high school set just a block from the bombing site, jittery parents dropped off children as teachers - some of whom had run in the race - greeted each other with hugs.
Carlotta Martin of Boston said leaving her kids at school has been the hardest part of getting back to normal.
"We're right in the middle of things," Martin said outside the school as her children, 17-year-old twins and a 15-year-old, walked in, glancing at the police barricades a few yards from the school's front door.
"I'm nervous. Hopefully, this stuff is over," she continued. "I told my daughter to text me so I know everything's OK."
Tsarnaev was captured Friday night after an intense all-day manhunt that brought the Boston area to a near-standstill. He was cornered and seized, wounded and bloody, after he was discovered hiding in a tarp-covered boat in a Watertown backyard.
He had apparent gunshot wounds to the head, neck, legs and hand, the FBI said in court papers.
Meanwhile, investigators in the Boston suburb of Waltham are looking into whether there are links between Tamerlan Tsarnaev and an unsolved 2011 slaying. Tsarnaev was a friend of one of three men found dead in an apartment with their necks slit and their bodies reportedly covered with marijuana.

Deadly explosion, fire rip through Texas fertilizer plant

  

A deadly explosion and fire tore through a fertilizer plant in a small Texas town late on Wednesday, injuring more than 100 people, leveling dozens of homes and spewing toxic fumes that forced evacuations of half the community, authorities said.

They said an undetermined number of people had been killed, and that the death toll was expected to rise as search teams combed through the rubble of the West Fertilizer Co. plant and surrounding homes.

"We do have confirmed fatalities," Texas Public Safety Department spokesman D.L. Wilson told a news conference early on Thursday, about four hours after the explosion. "The number is not current yet. It could go up by the minute. We're in there searching the area right now and making sure that it's safe."

Officials said flames that continued to smolder inside the plant posed two threats - the possibility of setting off an explosion of a second fertilizer tank and the emission of hazardous fumes into the surrounding community.
Wilson said about half the town, an area encompassing eight to 10 blocks, had been evacuated and that "we might even have to evacuate on the other side of town" if winds shift overnight as expected.
The blast, apparently preceded by a fire at the plant, was reported at about 8 p.m. CDT (0100 GMT on Thursday) in West, a town of some 2,700 people about 80 miles south of Dallas and 20 miles north of Waco.
West Mayor Tommy Muska told Reuters that five or six volunteer firefighters who were among the first on the scene in the blast zone were unaccounted for.
CNN reported that at least two people had been killed, but that figure could not be independently confirmed.
"It's a lot of devastation. I've never seen anything like this," McLennan County Sheriff Parnell McNamara said. "It looks like a war zone with all the debris."
CAUSE A MYSTERY
Wilson said 50 to 75 homes were damaged by the explosion and a fire that followed, and that a nearby 50-unit apartment complex had been reduced to "a skeleton standing up." Muska put the number of destroyed homes at between 60 and 80.
Wilson said 133 people had been evacuated from a damaged nursing home, but it was not immediately clear how many residents of the facility were hurt.
He estimated that overall more than 100 people had been injured in the disaster.
There was no immediate official word on what sparked the explosion as emergency personnel assisted victims and doused the flames. U.S. Representative Bill Flores, whose district includes West, said he doubted any foul play was involved.
"I would not expect sabotage by any stretch of the imagination," he told CNN.
The air in town remained thick with smoke hours after the explosion, and the area around the blast site was littered with shards of wood, bricks and glass.

A Texas public safety dispatcher in Waco told Reuters the explosion followed a fire that erupted at the plant. Video footage showed a large fire burning at the scene before exploding into a fireball.

The blast produced ground motion equivalent to that of a magnitude 2.1 earthquake, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
A Reuters reporter observed that a nearby middle school and several homes were severely burned. Dallas television station WFAA reported from helicopters that a roughly three-block area of West appeared to have been flattened.
BURNS, BROKEN BONES

Jason Shelton, 33, a father-of-two who lives less than a mile from the plant, said he heard fire trucks heading toward the facility five minutes before the explosion, and felt the concussion from the blast as he stood on his front porch.

"My windows started rattling and my kids screaming," Shelton told Reuters. "The screen door hit me in the forehead ... and all the screens blew off my windows."
Hillcrest Baptist Medical Center in Waco reported treating 66 patients, including children, for injuries including lacerations, burns and broken bones.
"We are seeing a lot of lacerations and orthopedic-type injuries ... things you would expect in an explosion," said David Argueta, vice president of hospital operations.
He said nine people suffering burns had been transferred to the Parkland Hospital in Dallas. A third hospital, Providence Health Center, reported receiving more than 30 patients from the disaster.
Governor Rick Perry issued a statement saying his office had "mobilized state resources to help local authorities" deal with the incident.
A White House official said the Obama administration was aware of the situation and monitoring local and state response through the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

The explosion came two days before the 20th anniversary of a fire in nearby Waco that engulfed a compound inhabited by David Koresh and his followers in the Branch Davidian sect, ending a siege by federal agents.

About 82 members of the sect and four federal agents died at Waco.

Lakers hold off Rockets, take West's 7th seed 

 

Dwight Howard had a simple message for the Lakers after Chandler Parsons' 34-foot, line-drive 3-pointer at the regulation buzzer added five more minutes to the final game of Los Angeles' already exhausting regular season.

Nothing has been easy for the Lakers all year long, Howard told his teammates. Why should the finale be any different?
With five more minutes of perseverance, the Lakers ended up with quite a reward. After getting up Wednesday morning with no guarantee their season wouldn't end that night, they surged into the seventh playoff spot in the West with a 99-95 overtime victory over the Houston Rockets.
Steve Blake scored 24 points and Pau Gasol added his seventh career triple-double for the Lakers (45-37), who only clinched a postseason berth about 10 minutes before tipoff. Despite Parsons' improbable tying basket, Los Angeles won again without Kobe Bryant and Steve Nash, earning a first-round date with second-seeded San Antonio.
''I'm proud of the whole team and the way they stepped up at the end of the year,'' said Blake, who added seven assists and seven rebounds to cap his second impressive game in Bryant's absence. ''We definitely expected more at the beginning of the year, but we're proud we're here. ... I couldn't believe it when a couple of days ago somebody said we even had a chance to be in the seventh spot, and now we're there.''
Gasol had 17 points, 20 rebounds and 11 assists in his second triple-double in three games for the Lakers, who avoided the embarrassment of missing the playoffs for just the second time in Bryant's 17-year career.
Howard had 16 points and 18 rebounds for the Lakers, and the All-Star center blocked James Harden's shot in the final seconds of overtime to finish up the Lakers' fifth straight win, their eighth in nine games.
''From where we were 20 or 30 games ago, a seven (seed) is pretty good,'' coach Mike D'Antoni said. ''We shouldn't have been in that spot in the first place, but it's our fault.''
Antawn Jamison added 16 points as the Lakers won their second straight without Bryant, who tore his Achilles tendon last Friday and watched another game from his home in Orange County. Nash hasn't played in eight games with a hamstring injury, but the Lakers finished the regular season with a gritty comeback win despite Chandler's heroics.
''We've fought through so much adversity already,'' Gasol said. ''We knew we could handle a little more.''
Parsons hit a tying 3-pointer from three steps behind the line at the regulation buzzer for the Rockets (45-37), who will face top-seeded Oklahoma City after losing four of six to end the regular season.
Harden scored 30 points and Parsons had 23 for the Rockets, who already knew they were back in the postseason after a three-year absence, but could have ended up in three seedings depending on Wednesday's results. Houston had a shot at the No. 6 spot before Golden State beat Portland earlier, but Los Angeles holds the tiebreaker on the Rockets.
''If we play their pace, their two big guys just control the game after a while,'' Houston coach Kevin McHale said. ''We went through some stretches where we struggled offensively. We were stopping them, but they were just getting second and third shots. That killed us.''
Houston led for most of the night before the Lakers went ahead with 6 1/2 minutes to play, but both teams struggled offensively in the final minutes before Parsons ended up alone with the ball near midcourt in the final seconds after a broken-play scramble. His desperate 3-pointer had almost no arch, but dropped in to force overtime.
Neither team made a shot in overtime until Gasol's jumper with 2:26 left, ending a field-goal drought of more than eight minutes for the Lakers. After Jodie Meeks drove the baseline and dunked in the final minute, Howard stepped in front of Harden and blocked the Houston star's drive with 20 seconds left.
Blake and Meeks hit free throws in the final seconds to wrap it up.
''The Lakers did a good job down the stretch, and we didn't do as good of a job,'' said Jeremy Lin, who had 12 points on 4-of-14 shooting. ''We didn't get the looks we wanted to get, and we ended up with a lot of tough shots down the stretch.''
The Lakers nursed a small lead over the Jazz (43-39) down the stretch of their tumultuous season, but Utah held the tiebreaker. The Lakers were aware that the Jazz's 86-70 loss in Memphis had clinched Los Angeles' eighth straight postseason berth, but the Lakers still had ample reason to play hard against the Rockets, given their likely preference for facing San Antonio instead of Oklahoma City, which easily ousted the Lakers in last season's second round.
Houston stayed ahead for most of the first 3 1/2 quarters with steady offense from Harden and Parsons, particularly in transition. The Lakers' personnel deficiencies showed in their second game without Bryant, with coach Mike D'Antoni even fielding a backcourt in the first quarter featuring seldom-used Darius Morris and Andrew Goudelock, signed from the NBA D-League last weekend.
Houston built its lead up to 11 points in the third quarter, but Los Angeles chipped away steadily in the fourth, going ahead 81-79 on Blake's fourth 3-pointer with 6:36 to play.

NOTES: Howard grabbed his 9,000th career rebound in the first quarter, becoming the youngest player to reach the mark, 14 days faster than Wilt Chamberlain. Howard, who went straight from high school to the NBA, is only the 13th-fastest in terms of games (697). ... Houston has won just one playoff round since 1997. The Lakers haven't been knocked out in the first round of the postseason since 2007. ... Jim Parsons and Johnny Galecki of ''The Big Bang Theory'' attended the game, with Houston native Parsons wearing a Rockets hat.

Florida battles slimy invasion by giant snails

  

South Florida is fighting a growing infestation of one of the world's most destructive invasive species: the giant African land snail, which can grow as big as a rat and gnaw through stucco and plaster.
More than 1,000 of the mollusks are being caught each week in Miami-Dade and 117,000 in total since the first snail was spotted by a homeowner in September 2011, said Denise Feiber, a spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.
Residents will soon likely begin encountering them more often, crunching them underfoot as the snails emerge from underground hibernation at the start of the state's rainy season in just seven weeks, Feiber said.
The snails attack "over 500 known species of plants ... pretty much anything that's in their path and green," Feiber said.
In some Caribbean countries, such as Barbados, which are overrun with the creatures, the snails' shells blow out tires on the highway and turn into hurling projectiles from lawnmower blades, while their slime and excrement coat walls and pavement.
"It becomes a slick mess," Feiber said.
A typical snail can produce about 1,200 eggs a year and the creatures are a particular pest in homes because of their fondness for stucco, devoured for the calcium content they need for their shells.
The snails also carry a parasitic rat lungworm that can cause illness in humans, including a form of meningitis, Feiber said, although no such cases have yet been identified in the United States.
EXOTIC INVASION
The snails' saga is something of a sequel to the Florida horror show of exotic species invasions, including the well-known infestation of giant Burmese pythons, which became established in the Everglades in 2000. There is a long list of destructive non-native species that thrive in the state's moist, subtropical climate.
Experts gathered last week in Gainesville, Florida, for a Giant African Land Snail Science Symposium, to seek the best ways to eradicate the mollusks, including use of a stronger bait approved recently by the federal government.
Feiber said investigators were trying to trace the snail infestation source. One possibility being examined is a Miami Santeria group, a religion with West African and Caribbean roots, which was found in 2010 to be using the large snails in its rituals, she said. But many exotic species come into the United States unintentionally in freight or tourists' baggage.
"If you got a ham sandwich in Jamaica or the Dominican Republic, or an orange, and you didn't eat it all and you bring it back into the States and then you discard it, at some point, things can emerge from those products," Feiber said.
Authorities are expanding a series of announcements on buses, billboards and in movie theaters urging the public to be on the lookout.
The last known Florida invasion of the giant mollusks occurred in 1966, when a boy returning to Miami from a vacation in Hawaii brought back three of them, possibly in his jacket pockets. His grandmother eventually released the snails into her garden where the population grew in seven years to 17,000 snails. The state spent $1 million and 10 years eradicating them.
Feiber said many people unfamiliar with the danger viewed the snails as cute pets.
"They're huge, they move around, they look like they're looking at you ... communicating with you, and people enjoy them for that," Feiber said. "But they don't realize the devastation they can create if they are released into the environment where they don't have any natural enemies and they thrive."

 

 

Man Set on Fire in SUV Outside Long Beach 7-Eleven 

 

LONG BEACH, Calif. (KTLA) — Police are investigating a horrifying and seemingly random attack on a man outside a 7-Eleven store.

Investigators believe the 63-year-old victim was sitting in his car when another man tossed an incendiary device through an open window.
The SUV exploded in flames.
Witnesses helped pull the driver from the burning vehicle, but he suffered serious burns.
He was rushed to the hospital where he remains in critical condition.
It happened just after 5:00 p.m. on Friday near PCH and Clark Avenue in Long Beach.
Police have a possible suspect in custody.  He is believed to be a 39-year-old homeless man who frequents the area.
“The suspect was found at a nearby location taken into custody. I will be able to get more information as the investigation continues,” Sgt. Aaron Eaton told KTLA.
No word on a motive for the attack.
“There’s no information they had a relationship and no incident prior to this crime, so right now it looks like a random act,” according to Sgt. Eaton.

 

Lion Air jet crashes into sea in Bali; 45 hurt 

 

All 108 passengers and crew survived after a new Lion Air jet crashed into the ocean and snapped into two while attempting to land Saturday on the Indonesian resort island of Bali, injuring up to 45 people.

The injured were taken to several different hospitals for treatment, but there appeared to be no serious injuries, said airport spokesman Alfasyah, who like many Indonesians uses only one name. There were three foreigners on board — two Singaporeans and a French national — all of whom suffered slight injuries.
TV footage showed police and rescuers using rubber boats to evacuate the 101 passengers and seven crew members. The Boeing 737 could be seen sitting in the shallow water with a large crack in its fuselage.
Officials initially said the plane overshot the runway before hitting the water, but a spokesman for Lion Air, a low-cost carrier, said at a news conference that the plane crashed about 50 meters (164 feet) ahead of the runway. The weather was cloudy with rain at the time of the incident.
"It apparently failed to reach the runway and fell into the sea," said the spokesman, Edward Sirait.
He said the Boeing 737-800 Next Generation plane was received by the airline last month and was declared airworthy. The plane originated in Bandung, the capital of West Java province, and had landed in two other cities on Saturday prior to the crash.

"We are not in a capacity to announce the cause of the crash," Sirait said, adding that the National Safety Transportation Committee was investigating.

Those on board recalled being terrified as the plane slammed into the water Saturday afternoon.
"The aircraft was in landing position when suddenly I saw it getting closer to the sea, and finally it hit the water," Dewi, a passenger who sustained head wounds in the crash and uses one name, told The Associated Press.
"All of the passengers were screaming in panic in fear they would drown. I left behind my belongings and went to an emergency door," she said. "I got out of the plane and swam before rescuers jumped in to help me."
Rapidly expanding Lion Air is Indonesia's top discount carrier, holding about a 50 percent market share in the country, a sprawling archipelago of 240 million people that's seeing a boom in both economic growth and air travel. The airline has been involved in six accidents since 2002, four of them involving Boeing 737s and one resulting in 25 deaths, according to the Aviation Safety Network's website.
Lion Air is currently banned from flying to Europe due to broader safety lapses in the Indonesian airline industry that have long plagued the country. Last year, a Sukhoi Superjet-100 slammed into a volcano during a demonstration flight, killing all 45 people on board.
Indonesia is one of Asia's most rapidly expanding airline markets, but is struggling to provide qualified pilots, mechanics, air traffic controllers and updated airport technology to ensure safety.
Lion Air, which started flying in 2000, signed a $24 billion deal last month to buy 234 Airbus planes, the biggest order ever for the French aircraft maker. It also gave Boeing its largest-ever order when it finalized a deal for 230 planes last year. The planes will be delivered from 2014 to 2026.