Floods claim 50 lives, wipe out crops

Floods claim 50 lives, wipe out crops

JAKARTA (JP): At least 50 people were killed and 43 others are
still missing in floods that swept through North Sumatra,
Bengkulu and Central Java during the past week.

Although officially the dry season has already begun in
Indonesia, some parts of the country have continued to receive
unusually high rainfall and unexpected flash floods.

Besides claiming dozens of lives, the floods have left large
tracts of rice paddies under water and thousands of people
homeless, according to reports received in Jakarta yesterday.

South Tapanuli in North Sumatra has been worst affected by the
flooding, with 44 people dead and 21 people missing. Some of the
casualties were buried alive in a landslide that resulted from
the incessant rain last Thursday.

"The Search and Rescue Agency team is still working to find
the missing people," Sarmadan Harahap, the spokesman for the
regency administration, told The Jakarta Post by phone yesterday.

The team had recovered 42 bodies by Friday but had managed to
find only two more over the weekend, he said.

More than 5,000 people in 20 villages in the Sipiongan and
Labuhan Batu districts fled their homes because of the floods
which struck the two areas on Thursday, Sarmadan said. Rice
fields and rubber plantations had also been inundated, he added.

Sarmadan said the North Sumatra provincial social office had
sent 16 tons of rice and consignments of clothes, blankets and
medicines to the area.

He said arbitrary felling of the forest in the area had
contributed to the disaster in the regency. The regency
administration has appealed to the central government to tighten
the regulations governing timber companies operating in the area,
he added.

Bengkulu

In Bengkulu, six people are confirmed dead and 22 others are
still missing after flashfloods swept through the regency of
Rejang Lebong following torrential rain during the weekend,
Antara reported.

The floods, which affected 10 villages in the regency, also
inundated some 2,500 hectares of rice fields and sent hundreds of
families scrambling to reach higher ground.

There were no reports of casualties in the floods that struck
35 villages in the coastal town of Cilacap, Central Java, over
the weekend.

But overland transportation routes between Central Java and
West Java were cut as the Cibeureum, Cikoneng, Cijalu and
Cilopadang rivers overflowed.

At least 1,800 houses were inundated and more than 6,000
people were evacuated, according to officials.

Cilacap Regent Mohammad Soepardi toured the affected area
yesterday, meeting with and consoling the flood victims in their
temporary shelters. (rms/wah)