Sutiyoso haunted by potential flood crisis
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Take out your umbrella, roll-up your pants and if you're one of the unlucky Jakartans living in flood prone areas, better get out your dinghy because even Governor Sutiyoso admits there is nothing the administration can do other than grin and bear it.
With Jakarta already bracing for huge floods later this month, the Meteorological and Geophysics Agency (BMG) on Thursday confirmed that its going to be a wet, wet couple of months in most parts of the country.
The Agency said that the abnormal shortfall of rain in the last three months would result in a possible deluge in January and February.
Earlier the city's Public Works Agency warned of flooding chaos with at least 78 areas in Jakarta prone to floods.
On Thursday Sutiyoso conceded there was little that his administration could do about it.
"I have to confess, from Ali Sadikin's time to mine, we have not found a solution to the flood problem," he said referring to the Jakarta governor who served from 1966 to 1977.
He contended that a large amount of money was needed to resolve the problem which was compounded by the fact that 40 percent of Jakarta is below sea level.
He claimed that the ideal solution was to build a horse-shoe shaped water canal which would connect and control the water level of the 13 rivers passing through Jakarta.
"But the cost of this would be huge," he charged.
But Sutiyoso neglected to mention why a concerted long term effort to at least mitigate the perennial flooding had not been devised since he took office nearly four years ago.
Minor and major floods are a common occurrence in the capital in almost every rainy season.
The last major flood here occurred in 1996 leaving many residential areas and main thoroughfares paralyzed.
Many North Jakarta residents may already be bracing themselves as the latest data indicates that seawater level of high tides had risen from 1.5 meters to 1.9 meters.
The Meteorological and Geophysics Agency said the heavy rain between mid January through mid February would be caused by increased oceanic temperature and the tropical cyclones around the equator.
The agency said that eastern Sumatra, South Kalimantan, South Sulawesi, Java, Bali, West and East Nusa Tenggara along with the southern part of Irian Jaya would experience the heaviest rainfall.
"Tidal waves will also occur in the waters surrounding those areas," warned Paulus Agus Winarso, the agency's chief of weather and climate forecast.
There is no precise estimate on how much rain will fall, but it should exceed last year's 384.7 millimeters and 309.8 millimeters for January and February respectively.
As a comparison this would mean the downpour would be at least four times heavier than December which only saw 84 millimeters of rain.