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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 with a call still remembers taking refuge in his neighbor’s space on January 1 of this year when it 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 will have to do it this year,” Yusuf said at CNA. “I am concerned that a cramped evacuee shelter is fertile ground for COVID-19. I have two young children, 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 rained a lot in the mountainous spaces upriver and the population remembered seeing the river get angry faster and faster, carrying with them the rubble of 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, was 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 water, in some spaces up to 3 m deep. Three thousand people, adding Mr. 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 Agency for Meteorology, Climate and Geophysics (BMKG) has predicted that The La Niña weather phenomenon will result in heavy rains of 20 to 40 above the intensity observed in past rainy 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 was submerged 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 no more casualties because of the primary flood. He ordered his men to make sure the water arrived 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 doesn’t crash. 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 it doesn’t deserve to be casualties, that all citizens are, and that the water will have to recede 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 expert in environmental generation at the University of Indonesia and president of the Indonesian Water Institute tank, is skeptical.
“The thirteen rivers (from Jakarta) can only bring 950 cubic meters of water consistent with the second. During heavy rains, there would possibly be more than 2,500 (cubic meters consistent with the second). The rivers will not yet have a selection to overflow, ” said Ali to CNA.
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 major flood will make the situation worse.
Mr. Wiku Adisasmito, spokesman for the central government’s COVID-19 corridor group, warned of the COVID-19 clusters imaginable in flood relief camps and suggested regional administrations think of safe places where others can evacuate.
“People are sometimes crowded in shops. This poses a threat of infection (COVID-19). People would be more vulnerable (to COVID-19) because their degrees of immunity fall into disaster. Regional administrations will have to anticipate this by applying strict health protocols in 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 bachelor 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 supplied 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 old. We’re in the age group,” he said.
Sutarjo, a 78-year-old retiree with blurred eyes, sunken eyes and hearing loss, lives with his Ratih Suratya, 74.
“The water point has increased so far,” Sutarjo said of the January flood, indicating a stain on his neon green wall that is about 3 m 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 it would only be one or two meters deep, so we put all our valuable garments and possessions in the most sensitive part of the closet and went to bed on the floor of the moment.
When 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 water up to their knees, 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.
The latest floods hit the middle-income complex on October 25 and citizens were still surprised when the ANC surrendered 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 packed their bags and moved out, 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 have to make the most of what we have and prepare for the worst,” Sutarjo said.