JAKARTA - More than 6,500 residents in low-lying areas in Jakarta were evacuated to shelters on Tuesday (Feb 6) morning following torrential rains that caused widespread floods across the Indonesian capital and landslides in satellite cities. They were among more than 11,000 people who were affected by the floods, officials said.
"Although thousands of houses have been inundated, a lot of residents declined to evacuate. They opted to stay at their house, having moved their belongings to the upper floor of their house," Head of Information Data Center and Public Relations of the National Disaster Management Agency (BNPB) Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said in a statement.
In areas such as Cawang, Cililitan and Kalibata, flood waters reached as high as 2 metres.
Some residents were still stranded on the second floor of their homes in Jatinegara area, where houses were immersed in flood waters above 2-metre deep, TVone reported.
Rainfalls are forecast to be 'heavy to very heavy' on Tuesday in greater Jakarta, although it is in a declining trend, said Harry Tirto Djatmiko, the spokesman of the national weather agency BMKG.
Pointing out that Monday saw extreme rainfalls, Mr Harry said BMKG forecasts that southern part of Sumatra will be the next region in Indonesia that will likely be hit by very heavy to extreme rainfalls. The trend moved from Nusa Tenggara, Bali regions in the east, which saw extreme weather late December and early January, before moving to Java, and then Sumatra later, Mr Harry added.
Ms Sami Suprianto 43, a housewife who lives in Rawa Jati, south Jakarta, a few metres from the Ciliwung river, told The Straits Times: "We were just carrying and moving things to higher places, but the flood water came too fast. It came fast and receded fast. Water ruined a lot of our stuff."
Meanwhile, a woman who was trapped under a collapsed underpass near the Jakarta airport on Monday evening was pulled out from the rubble early Tuesday morning.
After a 10-hour ordeal, the 24-year-old woman, identified as Dianti, who was an employee of Garuda Maintenance Facility, an aircraft maintenance and repair company, was conscious when rescuers evacuated her from the car she was in.
She was immediately rushed to the nearest Tangerang regency hospital around 3am but succumbed to her injuries after she was transferred to Mayapada hospital.
She was driving past the underpass near the Soekarno-Hatta airport when the wall collapsed around 5pm local time on Monday.
A front seat passenger, identified as Mutmainah, was also pulled out of the rubble on Tuesday morning and was in stable condition.
"Her right stomach was stuck under a steel reinforced concrete slab about 50cm thick and 20m long. She screamed in pain when we tried to pull her," Air Marshal Muhammad Syaugi, head of Indonesia's search and rescue agency (Basarnas), told MetroTV, describing the challenges rescuers faced before they finally managed to pull her out.
In other parts of the country, search and rescue officers recovered three bodies from a landslide which buried five people in Warung Menteng village in Bogor regency, West Java province. The three bodies are of a 34-year-old woman, a 17-year-old boy and a 1 1/2 year-old infant. Two boys, aged eight and 10, remained missing.
