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25 dead 30 thousand evacuated after flooding in Indonesia
At least 25 people are dead and 30-thousand have been forced to flee their homes in Indonesia, due to floods caused by heavy rains in recent days.
Six people died of flood-related incidents in Jakarta on Wednesday, Antara news agency said. The deaths brought the number killed in the capital and its outskirts to 18 in two days.
The other deaths reported by police or local media included five on the resort island of Bali and two elsewhere.
Between 15 to 20 percent of Jakarta was under water on Wednesday afternoon, according to city's flood control agency. The rain has fallen in the capital of some eight million people since Saturday.
At least 30,000 people had fled or been rescued from their homes and were staying in schools, mosques and neighbourhood offices.
Officials said the muddy brown water was up to two meters (6.6 feet) deep in some places. The state disaster control agency has provided five rubber rafts and 100 tonnes of rice.
The flooding caused massive traffic jams on the main road to Sukarno-Hatta international airport and big holdups on other highways.
Airport officials said several flights were delayed because travellers were stuck in jams.
Commuters living in the suburbs had to skip work. Environment Minister Nabiel Makarim urged people in unaffected areas to stay home so as not to worsen the jams.
Environmentalists blamed the floods on years of bad city planning and corruption that had allowed green areas to be built on, causing more rain to run into the city's numerous rivers rather than soak into the soil.
Rubbish-clogged or broken drains also play a part.
Two factory workers in the Cimanggis area, east of Jakarta, were killed on Wednesday when a wall collapsed on their dormitory unit, police said.
On Tuesday six people were killed when a mudslide struck their homes in southern Jakarta before dawn.
Four others died from separate flood-related incidents in Tangerang, a satellite city just west of Jakarta, the daily Koran Tempo said Wednesday. Marines used motorised rafts to rescue women and children from the area.
On Bali, five people were killed by floods and landslides in Buleleng district on the north coast on Tuesday, said district police chief M. Syafei. Two others were missing.
A woman was found dead in a field Wednesday near the East Java town of Situbondo after being swept away by mudslides, police said. A man was missing.
A one year-old baby was killed by floods in the Simo Pomahan Baru area of Surabaya late Wednesday.
"Lack of catchment and green belt areas, improper building development, lack of city planning and weak law enforcement all have contributed to the problems of flooding," Makarim said.
The rains have been no heavier than normal for this time of year, he noted.
"The misuse of catchment areas and years of misconceptions in city planning are some of the main causes of the recent floods," said Ahmad Safruddin, from the environmental watchdog Walhi.
Catchment areas cover less than three percent of Jakarta's 65,000 hectares (160,550 acres), while they should cover 20 percent, he said.
"Many of these areas have been turned into housing complexes by developers who obtained the licences and permits by paying money to corrupt city officials," Safruddin said.
Paulus Agus Winarso of the Meteorological and Geophysical Agency has said that in the 1980s around 60 percent of rainwater was absorbed by water catchment areas in Jakarta.
"Now nearly 100 percent of the water flows directly to the rivers as many water catchment areas were concreted over," he said.
vt/tn/sm/am AFP 301201 GMT JAN 02
31/01/2002 5:02:19 AM | ABC Radio Australia News
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