‘Flood control’ in Jakarta under fire as deaths hit 60
THE frequent heavy inundation caused by extreme rainfall and river floods across Jakarta since New Year’s Eve has raised questions about the city’s flood management capacity.
Floodwaters in several areas of the capital Jakarta had just begun to recede on Monday morning, but heavy rains again battered the city overnight to cause mild to severe flooding on Tuesday morning that paralysed traffic on several major streets.
According to PetaBencana.id, which provides real-time flood information, 87 areas across the city had reported floods by 8:53am (0153 GMT) on Tuesday.
With Tuesday’s flooding, several Commuter train lines and Transjakarta bus routes serving Greater Jakarta have been disrupted for two consecutive days. Several major train stations were closed on Tuesday due to the flooding, including Gambir Station and Sudirman Station.
Authorities temporarily halted the odd-even traffic policy on Tuesday. However, several toll roads were flooded, leaving commuters to use regular streets that contributed to severe traffic jams during the morning rush hour.
The two consecutive days of floods have forced at least 2,393 people, or 682 families, to flee their homes since Monday, the Jakarta Disaster Mitigation Agency said.
Jakarta governor Anies Baswedan tweeted on Monday that the city had undertaken measures to anticipate flooding, “by cleaning gutters, dredging drainage systems, checking water pumps and installing infiltration wells in several areas”.
The head of the Jakarta Water Resources Management Agency, Juaini Yusuf, said the agency was operating pumps across the city. He added that the floodwaters in North Jakarta could not be pumped out efficiently due to the high tide and that the Sunter sluice gate would remain closed until the tide receded.
The Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) warned that Greater Jakarta would continue to see medium to heavy rains with thunderstorms and strong winds during the rainy season, which was expected to peak between the last week of February and the first week of March.
The BMKG stations in Manggarai, East Setiabudi, Kelapa Gading, Pulogadung and Pulomas recorded extreme rainfall of over 150mm per day on Sunday, with Pulogadung recording the highest rainfall of 241mm per day.
The agency recorded Jakarta’s highest-volume rainfall since 2007 of 377mm per day on December 31, last year. The heavy New Year’s Eve downpour caused major flooding across Greater Jakarta, Banten and parts of West Java that claimed 60 lives and displaced hundreds of thousands of people.
The recurring floods during the first two months of the year prompted the Jakarta City Council to mull the establishment of a special flood management committee. Deputy speaker Zita Anjani said the committee would aim to improve flood mitigation through coordination with relevant stakeholders, instead of pointing fingers.
The idea emerged following the citywide flooding on New Year’s Eve, but there had been no follow-up because the majority of councillors viewed that event as a “natural disaster”, she said.
“Councilors have now voiced their view that tackling the floods is very important, because [flooding] has occurred repeatedly since January. All have agreed to establish the committee on floods,” she said on Monday.
Council speaker Prasetyo Edi Marsudi, who inspected gutters in Central Jakarta on Sunday, demanded better coordination between the city’s agencies.
He blamed the water resources agency for poor flood control, saying: “They seem unprepared to cope with heavy rain.”
Indonesian Association of Planners secretary-general Hendricus Andy Simarmata, an urban planning expert at the University of Indonesia, said that neither the regional administration nor the central government was prepared for managing high-intensity rainfall.
Andy criticised the administrations for their failure to create a revolutionary flood management system even after the massive Jakarta flood of 2013, which recorded 20 fatalities and incurred losses of trillions of rupiah.
“There are no new solutions to date. I’d say the city must stop turning green spaces into the concrete. Unfortunately, no regional leader wants to put the brake on development,” he said.
“We are simply unprepared [to manage] floods because we have plenty of unfinished green infrastructure projects,” he added, pointing to reservoirs, green spaces and coastal embankments that were still being developed.
National Disaster Mitigation Agency head Doni Monardo called for collective measures to solve Jakarta’s floods.
“In the last 20 to 30 years, Jakarta has experienced significant land subsidence – one of the primary causes is the widespread use of groundwater throughout the city. As a result, rainwater cannot easily flow to the sea,” he said. “This problem cannot be solved by a single institution only. A collective effort is needed.”
This week’s heavy rain has inundated the presidential palace compound as well as state-run Cipto Mangunkusumo Central General Hospital, which lost some valuable medical equipment to the flood.