Death and Displacement Mount in Indonesia Floods

 

JAKARTA, INDONESIA, Jan 23: While an estimated 60,000 Jakarta residents have been displaced following flooding across the city, flooding in other regions around the country have also forced thousands to evacuate and left losses potentially totaling billions, in addition to outbreaks of illness and damaged public facilities.

In the West Java district of Karawang, 75 kilometers west of Jakarta, nearly 12,000 residents have had to relocate to various evacuation points in the region, including the local culture and tourism office headquarters, officials said on Wednesday.

“Aside from distributing rice supplies from the government, the local administration has also deployed rubber boats to be used to evacuate residents and distribute food, water, clothes and school uniforms,” Karawang district chief Ade Swara said as quoted by Antaranews.com.

In Central Java, nearly 3,700 residents in the district of Kudus have had to flee their homes as floods there worsen, the Kudus Disaster Mitigation Agency, or BPBD, reported.

“Thousands of victims have been evacuated, according to today’s data. We have placed them in different evacuation points across four subdistricts,” Kudus BPBD logistics and emergency unit chief Rudi Maryanto said on Wednesday.

Among the evacuation points in Kudus are a sports center in Mejobo subdistrict and the Gulang and Jepang village halls in the same subdistrict.

In Jati subdistrict, at least six evacuation points have been put together, hosting more than a thousand individuals from Jati Wetan and Tanjung Karang villages.

Rudi said his agency predicted the number of evacuees would increase as efforts to get people to leave dangerously flooded neighborhoods continued.

On Java’s northern coastal highway, known as Pantura, an eight-meter stretch of the road in West Java’s Ciasem subdistrict was damaged after heavy rain hit the area for days, resulting in heavy traffic.

In addition to the damaged roads, a stretch of the same highway running from Subang to Indramayu in West Java was also heavily inundated, although media reports said water levels had started to subside and that traffic was able to pass as of Wednesday evening.

In Subang, floodwaters have inundated dozens of houses across 12 subdistricts, with water levels ranging from 50 centimeters to 2.5 meters in some areas.

In Jakarta, Metro TV quoted Eka Sari Lorean, the chairwoman of the city chapter of the Organization of Land Transportation Owners (Organda), as saying that the damage to the Pantura road had caused losses of up to Rp 15 billion ($1.23 million) daily to trucking companies transporting goods to West, Central and East Java.

She estimated the flooding had forced the companies to spend an extra Rp 2.5 million per day for each vehicle in extra expenses like fuel and repairs.

Eka said that during the floods this time last year, the trucking industry suffered up to Rp 50 billion in losses a day for two consecutive weeks.

She called on the government to start accounting for the impact of climate change when considering infrastructure development policies.

“The Asian Development Bank has warned that the Pacific region will face increasing economic losses due to climate change and I think there’s some truth to that,” Eka said, as quoted by Metrotvnews.com.

“Flooding on the Pantura this year covers a 20-kilometer section, while almost three-quarters of the region’s economic activity is dependent on the highway.”

Central Java Governor Ganjar Pranowo said on Wednesday that his office was in the process of calculating the total losses caused by flooding in the region.

“It will probably be in the billions of rupiah,” he said at the Supreme Audit Agency (BPK) headquarters in Jakarta.

“We have not recorded the total losses, for example in Jepara, where we thought the water would subside but it has instead risen. We don’t want to speculate.”

Ganjar said the provincial administration was currently focusing on preventing fatalities and ensuring residents’ safety.

In Manado, North Sulawesi, which has been badly hit by flash floods and landslides, evacuees have begun complaining of a range of illness, including upper respiratory tract infections, digestive disorders, skin diseases and other ailments, National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said on Wednesday.

 

 

source: The Jakarta Globe