Six people killed as floods strike CJava district
Six people killed as floods strike CJava district
CILACAP, Central Java (JP): Six people were drowned in the districts of Cilacap, Kebumen and Salatiga by floods that continue to affect many areas around the province.
The waters from the Serayu and Citanduy rivers are overflowing in 14 subdistricts in Cilacap, four in Kebumen and have already inundated thousands of houses.
Search and rescue workers said that they have so far found four bodies. Three were identified as Cilacap residents and one was from Kebumen.
In Salatiga, the victims were several youths that were trying to seek shelter when floods unexpectedly swept them away into a rocky river on Monday, Antara reported.
The body of Yulianto, 17, was found on Monday evening four kilometers down the river with bruises all over his body. The body of Dwi Lestari has yet to be found, police said yesterday.
Cilacap regent Muhammad Soepardi told The Jakarta Post yesterday that scores of villages in 11 subdistricts throughout the region were inundated.
Chief of the Cilacap food crop office Soetaryo said the flooding threatened several thousand hectares of paddy fields. "The crops will die if the flooding does not subside in a week," he told the Post.
Heavy rains in Central Java also triggered landslides in Banjarnegara and Wonosobo. The worst occurred in Wonosobo where a 50 meter road section was under 1.5 meters of water.
In the Kaliwiro subdistrict of Wonosobo, a landslide destroyed 32 houses, a kindergarten building and an elementary school building.
Traffic between Tegal and Purwokerto has been blocked because waters from the Pemali river have inundated the highway in Margasari that connects the two towns.
The floods also submerged railway tracks in Tegal which connect West Java and Central Java, but the water level has not risen high enough to disrupt railway traffic.
Central Java governor Soewardi yesterday toured some of the affected districts, including Pemalang, Tegal, Brebes, Banyumas and Cilacap.
The provincial government has provided 100 tons of rice for flood victims.
In the capital city of Semarang, a member of the provincial legislative council, Karseno, criticized district governments for responding late with flood information on their areas.
To make things worse, the information is rarely accompanied by accurate data, he said.
"This results in poor coordination between the provincial and regency governments when handling the situation," said Karseno, who is the head of a legislative commission in charge of social affairs.
"If information is always late, how can the government provide the necessary aid in time? This may also encourage corruption when distributing relief aid funds," he added.(wah/har/pan)