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YAKARTA: Mr. Yusuf, who lives in the Jakarta suburb of Bogor, fears the La Niña floods expected to reach the end of the year.
The 42-year-old man with a call still remembers having taken refuge in his neighbor’s space on January 1 of this year when he flooded.
They ended up stranded on the floor of their neighbor’s space for about 20 hours with little food, while the flood-prone community continued to be submerged in water to the knees.
Eventually, the two families went to an evacuation center, where they stayed for two nights.
“I’m afraid I’ll have to do it again this year,” Yusuf said at CNA. “I am concerned that a narrow shelter for evacuees is a fertile floor for COVID-19. I have two little kids, you see. But at the same time, we can’t stay home.
On 1 January, the tip of the Cileungsi River, which passes through two of Jakarta’s suburbs, Sentul and Bogor, began to rise shortly after dark.
That day it had rained a lot in the mountainous spaces upriver and the population remembered seeing the angry river faster and faster, bringing with it debris from fallen trees and mud.
The water point has become so high as night went on, it almost destroyed a bridge that, in the dry season, at least 6 meters from the river surface.
At 10 p. m. , the river began to stretch through the streets and roads of the residential complex Villa Nusa Indah, five kilometers from the eastern end of the Indonesian capital, flooding houses up to two hundred meters from the shore.
Hundreds of houses have been submerged in the water, in some spaces up to 3 m deep. Three thousand people, adding Mr. Yusuf, who does have the luxury of owning a two-story house, had to seek refuge in nearby mosques or seek refuge elsewhere.
The little glasses with salt beard and pepper said he didn’t know what to do if some other flood occurred while the country was still suffering from the spread of coronavirus.
And experts expect the next flood to be larger than the previous one due to La Niña’s weather phenomenon.
RACE AGAINST TIME
At least 15% of Jakarta and the surrounding suburbs flooded in January and about 173,000 people had to evacuate in a series of floods, which also killed 66 other people.
The Indonesian Meteorological, Climate and Geophysical Agency (BMKG) has predicted that La Niña’s weather phenomenon will cause heavy rains that will be 20-40% higher than the intensity observed in recent seasons.
“The peak (of La Niña) is expected to occur between December and February. Therefore, we will have to prepare (for herbal disasters) in December, January and February,” BMKG leader Dwikorita Karnawati said in a radio broadcast on October 25. .
La Niña’s weather phenomenon had already boosted the rainy season early, and parts of Indonesia experienced heavy downpers as early as August.
In and around Jarta, the rainy season has so far caused a series of landslides and floods that have affected thousands of residents. Although not as devastating as the January flood and only a handful of other people had to evacuate, the Villa Nusa Indah complex plunged back on October 25.
The government rushes into the floods, with dredging paints on rivers and flood dams in Jakarta.
Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedan said on November 4 that he was looking for the possibility of seeing more casualties in the primary flood and asked his men to make sure the water receded in less than six hours.
“Our drainage formula is capable of withstanding one hundred mm of rain. We want to make sure our drainage formula is not blocked. I don’t want to see any mild rain of less than a hundred mm,” he told his subordinates an inspection in northern Jakarta.
“If it rains like it did at the beginning of the year . . . I say they don’t deserve casualties, all citizens are, and the water will have to go back in six hours.
Mr Baswedan stated that immediate reaction time is intended to minimize the desire for others to evacuate and disclose to COVID-19 transmission.
But Mr. Firdaus Ali, an environmental generation expert at the University of Indonesia and president of the Indonesian Water Institute tank, is skeptical.
“The thirteen rivers (from Jakarta) can bring only 950 cubic meters of water consistent with the second. During heavy rains, there will possibly be more than 2500 (cubic meters consistent with the second). Rivers won’t have a selection yet to overflow,” Mr. Ali said at the NAC.
The expert said the only chance of floodwaters receding so temporarily is for Jakarta to evict thousands of other people who illegally occupy the banks and “normalize” rivers, which means widening and deepening watercourses, which Baswedan had promised not to do. do so in his 2017 crusade to become governor.
PREVENTION OF COVID-19 PROPAGATION
More than 120,000 people in Jakarta had COVID-19, a quarter of the national workload, and fitness experts fear a large flood will make the situation worse.
Mr. Wiku Adisasmito, spokesman for the central government’s COVID-19 corridor group, warned about COVID-19 groups imaginable in flood relief camps and suggested regional administrations think of safe places where others can evacuate.
“People are usually crowded into tents. This represents a threat of infection (COVID-19). People would be more susceptible (to COVID-19) because their degrees of immunity decrease in the event of a disaster. Regional administrations will have to anticipate this by implementing strict fitness protocols in the flood relief camps, “he said at a press convention on October 15.
The Jakarta Disaster Mitigation Agency (BPBD Jakarta) said it is mapping potential flood relief sites and looking for tactics to minimize the spread of COVID-19.
“We are in favour of venues such as sports stadiums and function rooms. We also plan to turn schools (into shelters), which we can do now because schoolchildren are reading at home. If that’s not enough, we’ll put them in hotels,” he added. Wardoyo, head of emergency and evacuated at BPBD Jakarta, told Indonesian news portal Detik on November 8.
Wardoyo, who also has a name, said relief centers will be more distributed if concentrated in one or two posts as in past years, evacuees will also be subjected to immediate COVID-19 testing and tents will be provided with separation panels. .
EXPERIENCING THE WORST
Sutarjo, a resident of Villa Nusa Indah, is not convinced and told CNA that he would stay in a small room at the time of the floor of his house, which he built especially as a flood shelter, and then in a shelter with plenty of other evacuees.
“My wife and I are older. We’re in the age group, ” he said.
Sutarjo, a 78-year-old retiree with sunken, blurred eyes and hearing loss, lives with his 74-year-old Ratih Suratya.
“The water point has gone up so far,” Sutarjo said of the January flood, pointing to a stain on his neon green wall that is about 3 yards below the ceiling.
The January flood surprised the couple, his wife Suratya said. “We knew the flood was coming, but we didn’t know how bad it was going to be,” he told the NAC.
“We thought the intensity would be one or two meters, so we put all our valuable clothes and effects in the closet and slept on the floor of the moment.
By the time they woke up, the flood destroyed everything they had. “We had no food. We only had the clothes on our backs. Our cash there, but the tickets were soaked,” Mr. Sutarjo.
Desperate for food and with their space still submerged in the water knee-deep, they evacuated to the nearest shelter.
This time, with the risk of COVID-19 lurking, they are determined not to leave their homes, no matter how severe the flood. “We just can’t take the risk,” Suratya said.
Villa Nusa Indah is one of the flood-prone housing complexes in the Greater Jakarta region, which includes the indonesian capital and its suburbs.
A flood last hit the middle-income complex on October 25, and citizens were still surprised when the ANC visited him two weeks later.
A few meters from the banks of the Cileungsi River, the roads were still covered with thick, slippery dust and inaccessible to motor vehicles, while the bridge that was almost devastated by the flood had parts of its bars without or maimed by the strong current.
Many other people had packed their bags and moved, without being able to cope with the constant risk of flooding. They left deserted houses covered in mud that hadn’t been sold for years.
But moving out is an option for the retirement couple. A space across a flood-prone river is all you can afford.
“We just want to make the most of what we have and prepare for the worst,” Mr. Sutarjo.