Lampung floods cause widspread problems

Lampung floods cause widspread problems

Oyos Saroso HN and Bahrul Ilmi Yakub, The Jakarta Post,
Bandarlampung/Palembang

Floods over the last week that have affected nearly the entire
province have brought not only material losses to local people
and the administration but also have disrupted schools, farms and
the supply of electricity to Lampung and the surrounding areas.

Thus far, thousands of hectares of rice fields which were to
be harvested in another month in East and South Lampung,
Tanggamus and Way Kanan, have been seriously damaged. The looming
harvest failure in the regencies will almost certainly affect the
supply of rice to Lampung as well as to South Sumatra, Jambi and
Bengkulu.

"The rice price in the four provinces will increase in the
next three months because of the damage to the rice fields," a
staff member from the local agriculture office said here over the
weekend.

On Sunday evening, a torrential downpour with strong winds
continuously pounded South Lampung, effectively drowning hundreds
of hectares of rice which were nearly ready for harvest.

Ali, a farmer in Katibung, said the flood had begun its
destruction of the farmland on Thursday last week and, "a harvest
failure is imminent since there has been no sign that the rain
will stop any time soon."

He acknowledged that some farmers had harvested their rice
ahead of schedule and sold it at Rp 100,000 per 100 kilograms, Rp
50,000 below normal for the prematurely harvested rice.

Data at the local agriculture office showed the harvest
failure had caused Rp 1.5 billion in losses due to damage of at
least 98 hectares of paddy fields and 150 hectares of chili
pepper gardens and corn fields in Central and East Lampung and
Way Kanan.

In East lampung, the flood destroyed a total of 214 houses and
2,138 hectares of paddy fields and shrimp ponds. Thousands of
students were unable to attend school because their school
buildings were still immersed in water.

Iwan Nurdaya Djafar, spokesman for the East Lampung
administration, said the local administration had been
coordinating with subdistrict chiefs to provide humanitarian
relief for more than 3,000 people who had fled after their houses
were damaged.

"Most flood victims are accommodated in mosques, government
offices and school buildings which are safe from the flood," he
cited.

Sutomo, coordinator of the local office of the Agency for
Handling of Natural Disasters (PBA), called on local people to be
alert of a possible worsening of the floods in the coming weeks.

"According to information we received from the local office of
the Meteorologic and Geophysics Agency, a massive storm is
expected to pound the province in the coming weeks as a large
weather system over the Indian Ocean continues its course,
directly headed for southern Sumatra," he said.

Farmers in North Lampung have complained about the presence of
crop-eating rodents and insects that were threatening thousands
of hectares of crops in the regency.

"The grasshoppers, rats and other vermin arrived recently and
we don't know where they came from," Sarno, a farmer in
Ganjaranagung Village, North lampung, said.

Meanwhile, Nurlis, chief of the provincial health office, said
that his office had set up a joint team with the public health
centers to handle the outbreak of possible epidemics caused by
the flooding.

"So far, the death toll from diarrhea and dengue fever
epidemics has reached eleven in the province," he said, adding
that West Lampung was the worst hit area.

The flood has also effected the supply of electricity from the
Waduk Way Besai hydro-electric power plant in West Lampung, to
the province, causing four separate blackouts last week.

"Two power plants have been totally shut down after being
flooded for a week. We need three months to repair the 90
megaWatt-power plants," Arief M., spokesman for the state-owned
electricity company PT PLN's branch office in Tanjungkarang,
said.

In Palembang, South Sumatra, Rijadi Amir, spokesman for the
local office of PT PLN, expressed his disappointment with the
damaged power plants in West Lampung, which required PLN to
activate rotating blackouts in Lampung, Bengkulu, Jambi and South
Sumatra.

He said that all the areas in those provinces would be
affected by the rotating blackouts three or four times a week
because of the decreased supply of power in the region.

"PLN will suffer Rp 9 billion in losses per day because of the
dysfunction of the two hydropower plants in West Lampung," he
said.