Cloud seeding partly blamed for deadly Bandung landslide

Yuli Tri Suwarni, The Jakarta Post, Bandung

Deforestation and cloud seeding were blamed on Friday for a landslide that left at least 12 people dead and three others missing in Cililin, Bandung.

Surono, a senior official of the Volcanology and geological disaster mitigation directorate (DVMBG), said the cloud seeding project created by the central government caused the landslide in the Gedugan area, which lacked trees to sustain soil.

Rain from the cloud seeding should have fallen in the Cianjur regency in West Java, adding to the Cimanuk and Citarum rivers, which supply water to three dams in Saguling, Cirata and Jatiluhur, he said.

"Gedugan is deforested and is not safe to live and this -- together with the cloud seeding -- triggered the landslide," Surono said.

The central government has been carrying out cloud seeding in West Java and Central Java since early April to fill up major dams in anticipation of a water crisis during this year's dry season. The project costs about Rp 3.8 (US$441,860) and is funded from the state and provincial budgets.

However, West Java administration project head Darso Suhanda denied Surono's claims the disaster was caused by cloud seeding.

The landslide occurred at 9pm on Wednesday night, he said, long after rain produced by cloud seeding would have had any effect on the area.

"It's impossible cloud seeding was carried out at night." Darso said.

State forestry company Perhutani also claimed heavy rain alone was to blame for the disaster, which occurred on the slopes of Mount Gedugan in Cililin, some 60 kilometers west of Bandung.

The precipitation lasted three hours, with up to 52 millimeters of rain falling at the location of the landslide, a spokesman for the company, Hari Priyanto said.

He said the landslide occurred at a spring dam created by local villagers to meet their demand for clean water and irrigate their farms.

"The heavy rains then broke the dam and the soil beneath it was later dragged away because it was unable to sustain the surging water," Hari said.

Meanwhile, a local from Walahir, Kidang Panajung village, Umar said farmers in the area grew now corn and cassava on land that used to be planted with pine trees. Since 1998, people outside the village had begun clear the trees, he said.

Another Walahir villager Odong, in his seventies, said residents had been living in the disaster area since the 1930s.

"From 1931 to the 1980s, the pine trees here were still dense. But they were later cut down by outsiders with electric chainsaws starting after the fall of president Soeharto in 1998," he said.

Kidang Panajung village head Ii Setia Permana said the government would soon relocate some 300 families from Walahir to 200 houses in a safer area.

In 2000, a landslide buried a section of road in Walahir but caused no deaths or injuries.

By Friday, a rescue team had yet to find the three missing people buried in the landslide, despite the presence of heavy earth moving equipment at the scene.

Thousands of onlookers have flocked to the disaster area to inspect the damage.