Sutiyoso haunted by potential flood crisis

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.