Cloud seeding partly blamed for deadly Bandung landslide

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.