Jakarta under water

What millions of people in Jakarta had feared, has happened. Floodwaters engulfed many parts of the capital on Thursday. As a consequence, in the early hours of the day, tens of thousands of residents had to leave their homes and belongings to seek refuge on higher ground as the water rose to more than one meter high in many places.

As was the case last year, again, the early warning system did not quite work. There were reports that water-pump operators were not put on alert when the floods started to inundate residential areas at around midnight. And when they were, some pumps did not function.

Again, the rescue operation system did was not work as expected. Most of the people in the affected areas had to find their own way to safety. And worse, many chose to brave the floods and stay home to protect their homes and belongings from possible looting. Only a few police officers were seen around the flooded areas on Thursday.

It is not surprising that many residents directed their anger at Jakarta Governor Sutiyoso and his entourage, who decided to cruise through some affected areas in a boat.

It seems that the capital city has not learned from last year's lesson, when floods submerged many parts of the city for several days in early February and caused billions of rupiah in damage, claiming 34 lives and displacing nearly 400,000 people.

Jakarta is prone to flooding, which occurs every year in the rainy season in January and February. The city's vulnerability is due to the fact that much of its area lies below sea level through which 13 rivers flow, carrying rain water from the higher and deforested hinterland south of the city.

The vulnerability increases at the same rate, at least, as rate of the shrinkage of the catchment areas to the south. This shrinkage has been going on for years, while there have been no serious efforts to control it -- and not because of a lack of regulations.

The Jakarta city administration itself has worsened the problem by recklessly issuing property development licenses covering more and more areas that for centuries had been functioning as natural catchment areas. Even mangrove forests, which decades ago lined most of the seashore north of the city, have been rapidly disappearing and are being replaced by property development which hampers the flow of water from the hinterland to the south to the open sea in the north.

Public pressure to impose a moratorium on construction in water catchment areas, not to mention to revoke existing construction permits, obviously misbegotten, has fallen on deaf ears.

Under these circumstances, whenever heavy rains fall on the deforested mountainous hinterland south of the city and at the same time heavy rains pour on Jakarta itself, disaster is imminent. Add to that the fact that the sea tides are highest during the full moon, and the Indonesian capital city is rendered powerless to fight the water, a victim of its own avarice.

This weekend, will be a full moon. And there is a high probability of tropical storms bringing heavy rains. This time, the floods probably will not be as bad as those of last year. But even so, Jakarta residents need to brace themselves for the worst. More importantly, however, Jakarta badly needs to acknowledge its high vulnerability to yearly flooding and formulate some strategic plans to eventually control its negative impacts. No less important, it must prevent the further deterioration of the environment.

All this is not the responsibility of the governor or the government alone. As it concerns the basic interests of the whole population of the capital city, the people of Jakarta should stand together and formulate their own agenda.