Death toll from Asia floods tops 1,600 as military forces help survivors

PADANG, Indonesia – The death toll from flooding and landslides across parts of Asia climbed past 1,600 on Dec 1, as hardest-hit Sri Lanka and Indonesia deployed the military to help survivors.

Separate weather systems brought torrential, extended rainfall to the entire island of Sri Lanka and large parts of Indonesia’s Sumatra, southern Thailand and northern Malaysia last week.

Much of the region is now in its monsoon season, but climate change is producing more extreme rain events and turbocharging storms.

The World Health Organization said it was deploying rapid response teams and critical supplies to the region.

The UN agency’s chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters in Geneva that it was “another reminder of how climate change is driving more frequent and more extreme weather events, with disastrous effects”.

The relentless rain left residents clinging to rooftops awaiting rescue by boat or helicopter, and cut entire villages off from assistance.

Arriving in North Sumatra on Dec 1, Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto said “the worst has passed, hopefully”. The government’s “priority now is how to immediately send the necessary aid”, with particular focus on several isolated villages, he added.

Mr Prabowo has come under increasing pressure to declare a national emergency in response to flooding and landslides that have killed at least 593 people, with nearly 470 still missing.

Unlike his Sri Lankan counterpart, he has not publicly called for international assistance.

The death toll is the highest in a natural disaster in Indonesia since a massive 2018 earthquake and subsequent tsunami killed more than 2,000 people in Sulawesi.

The government has sent three warships carrying aid and two hospital ships to some of the worst-hit areas, where many roads remain impassable.

At an evacuation centre in North Aceh, 28-year-old Misbahul Munir described walking through water that reached his neck to get back to his parents.

“Everything in the house was destroyed because it was submerged,” he told AFP.

“I have only the clothes I am wearing,” he said, dissolving into tears. “In other places, there were a lot of people who died. We are grateful that we are healthy.”

“Everything went under”

In Sri Lanka, meanwhile, the government called for international aid and used military helicopters to reach people stranded by

flooding and landslides triggered by Cyclone Ditwah.

At least 390 people have been killed, Sri Lankan officials said on Dec 1, with 352 still missing.

Flood waters in the capital Colombo peaked overnight, and as the rain had stopped, there were hopes that the waters would begin receding. Some shops and offices began to reopen.

The flooding came as a surprise to some in Colombo.

“Every year we experience minor floods, but this is something else,” delivery driver Dinusha Sanjaya, 37, told AFP. “It is not just the amount of water, but how quickly everything went under.”

Officials said the extent of damage in the worst-affected central region was only just being revealed as relief workers cleared roads blocked by fallen trees and mudslides.

President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, who declared a state of emergency to deal with the disaster, called the flooding the “largest and most challenging natural disaster in our history”.

The losses and damage are the worst in Sri Lanka since the devastating 2004 Asian tsunami that killed about 31,000 people and left more than a million homeless.

Anger in Thailand

By the afternoon of Nov 30, rain had subsided across Sri Lanka, but low-lying areas of the capital were flooded and the authorities were bracing themselves for a major relief operation.

Military helicopters have been deployed to airlift stranded residents and deliver food, though one crashed just north of Colombo on the evening of Nov 30.

The annual monsoon season often brings heavy rain, triggering landslides and flash floods.

But the flooding that hit Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia this season was exacerbated by a rare tropical storm that dumped heavy rain on Sumatra island, in particular.

The waves of rain caused flooding that killed at least 176 people in southern Thailand, the authorities said on Dec 1. It was one of the deadliest flood incidents in the country in a decade.

The government has rolled out relief measures, but there has been growing public criticism of the flood response, and two local officials have been suspended over their alleged failures.

Across the border in Malaysia, where heavy rain also inundated large stretches of land in Perlis state, two people were killed. AFP, REUTERS