Thousands flee floods in Jakarta, 5 dead
JAKARTA: Five people were killed in the severe floods that submerged entire neighbourhoods in Indonesia’s capital Jakarta, authorities said on Sunday, as residents returned to clean their homes and salvage belongings.
The city was struck by torrential rains over the weekend, which flooded dozens of major roads and forced hundreds of people to rush to emergency shelters.
More than a thousand people fled their homes on Saturday, with the country’s meteorology agency warning the conditions were set to continue for the next week.
Some 1,380 Jakarta residents were evacuated from southern and eastern areas of the city, home to 10 million people, ater floodwaters reached up to 1.8 meters high in some areas, said Sabdo Kurnianto, the acting head of Jakarta’s disaster mitigation agency in a statement. He said no casualties had been reported.
People posted photos on social media of residents wading through shoulder-high muddy waters, cars almost entirely submerged, and search teams evacuating elderly residents in rubber dinghies in the peak of the monsoon season.
A 67-year-old man was found dead ater he was trapped in his waterlogged house in the badly hit southern part of the capital on Saturday, Jakarta disaster mitigation agency head Sabdo Kurnianto said.
He added that three boys died ater being swept away by the floods, and one girl drowned.
Indonesia’s meteorological agency warned that Greater Jakarta -- a region of around 30 million people that is regularly hit by floods in the rainy season -- can expect more heavy downpours next week.
“The river overflowed and brought a lot of mud. I have suffered great financial loss,” said Ali Fatullah, a fruit seller in the town of Bekasi on the outskirts of Jakarta.
He said furniture and electronic devices were damaged by the water.
Kurnianto said some 1,700 people remained in shelters, though many residents had started returning to their homes.
“Two hundred neighbourhoods have been affected, according to the latest data,” Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedan told local television early on Saturday, adding that more than two dozen evacuation centres have been prepared across the city.