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.