Prakosa claims cause of deadly Sumatran flood not known yet

Prakosa claims cause of deadly Sumatran flood not known yet

Apriadi Gunawan and Muninggar Sri Saraswati, The Jakarta Post,
Medan/Jakarta

The government sparked more confusion as to the cause of the
flash flood in a resort town in North Sumatra recently as a
minister said on Wednesday that only a preliminary conclusion as
to its cause had been reached so far.

Minister of Forestry M. Prakosa told the House of
Representatives on Wednesday the conclusion was based on video
footage taken on Nov. 6 by a helicopter in the vicinity of Bukit
Lawang, which was hit by the flood.

"I must say that our statement is a preliminary conclusion,"
he told a hearing with the House's forestry commission on
Wednesday.

The video footage was taken by a team comprising Mike
Griffiths and Yarrow Robertson of the Leuser Management Unit,
Johnson Panjaitan of the Indonesian Forum on the Environment
(Walhi) and Adi Susmianto from the Ministry of Forestry.

The Leuser Management Unit is a European Union-funded
organization devoted to the preservation of the Leuser ecosystem.

Prakosa said a government team would conduct a probe next week
to determine the definitive cause of the flood, which killed at
least 140 people.

During the meeting, legislator Anton Sihotang of the Golkar
faction said the government could not blame nature for the flood
that destroyed the Bukit Lawang tourist resort.

"Supposedly, it is natural factors that caused the flood. But,
why don't you find out why the area is no longer able to
accommodate the water. If the area was in good condition, heavy
rain would not be a problem," he told the minister and his
assistants.

Anton, who is a member of the House's fact finding team
investigating the Bukit Lawang disaster, said he had noticed
several logs with numbers on them at the scene.

"The logs were well-cut and clean. Could these be fallen
trees?" he asked.

Prakosa said that the government would only know for sure what
happened after the team completed its analysis. But, he asserted
that the government was committed to replanting cleared land in
the Mount Leuser National Park, as well as other locations around
the country.

"What we have to do is reforestation and clearing houses from
riverbanks to prevent similar disaster from occurring in the
future," he said.

However, the forestry ministry and local administration will
have to act quickly as on Wednesday a group representing tourism
interests called on the North Sumatra administration to reopen
the Bukit Lawang resort.

Solahuddin, the secretary of the Indonesian Travel Agents
Association, argued that Bukit Lawang had gained its reputation
among foreign and local tourists based on its natural scenery.

Most of the structures that were swept away by the flood were
restaurants, hostels and other tourism facilities lining the
riverbanks.

Early this week, the government claimed the disaster in Bukit
Lawang had nothing to do with rampant deforestation by illegal
loggers in the Mount Leuser National Park, which is located near
the resort.

The government blamed heavy rain for causing landslides in
dozens of areas on the upper reaches of the Bahorok river. The
mud and uprooted trees, the government claimed, had created
dozens of natural dams behind which water had built up, which
then burst when unusually heavy rain fell.

The North Sumatra Meteorology and Geophysics Agency said that
the rain in Bukit Lawang amounted to between 40 and 100
millimeters in one hour when the disaster took place.

However, the agency had no data on rainfall records in the
area.

Several non-governmental organizations working in the
environmental field insisted that widespread deforestation in the
Mount Leuser National Park had triggered the landslides.

The experts believe that the destruction of parts of the
Leuser ecosystem would definitely damage other parts.

Illegal logging has long been rampant in Indonesia, and causes
billions of dollars in state losses annually. Most of the illegal
logs and timber are exported abroad.