More downpours were forecast yesterday for Malaysia and the Indonesian island of Sumatra, where rain-triggered floods and landslides have killed at least 158 people and displaced at least half a million in the past week.
Another 163 people remained missing and are feared dead after torrential waters swept away thousands of homes in the Southeast Asian nations, mostly in Indonesia, officials said.
NORTHERN SUMATRA
Northern Sumatra has been hit hardest by the extreme weather. Roads and bridges in the region were washed away by violent floods, further complicating the relief efforts.
Urgently needed food and medical supplies had not yet reached about 7,000 people by yesterday, a week after the heaviest storms hit, said Aspindo Abusamah, acting mayor of Gayo Lues district.
Rations were being carried more than 30km on foot after airlifts were canceled due to the poor weather.
Another 4,200 people in other parts of Aceh faced acute food shortages, said Ishak, a local official in Bener Meriah, who like many Indonesians uses a single name.
AID BY AIR
Helicopters have dropped packages containing food, tents and medicine to survivors in some of the more remote villages, while volunteers in dinghies helped with the distribution of emergency supplies.
Accurate figures have been difficult to compile, but officials said yesterday that 76 people had died in Aceh province and 70 in North Sumatra province.
"We're seeing people with skin disease, fever and colds," said Jabad, an official in the area.
"They badly need medicine and clean drinking water," he told reporters.
MALAYSIA
In neighboring Malaysia, which is experiencing its most severe weather in a century, the death toll rose to 12 after authorities in Johor state recovered the body of a five-year-old girl who had gone missing two days earlier when floodwaters swept away the car she was in, the national news agency Bernama reported.
A spokesman for the state's floods operations center said a search was on for a 18-year-old youth who was swept away by swift currents on Friday night.
Seasonal downpours regularly cause landslides and flash floods in the sprawling Indonesian archipelago, where millions of people live in mountainous areas or in flood plains.
HOMES GONE
The Aceh disaster relief task force said more than 13,000 homes across six districts were severely damaged or washed away, more than 1,700 of them in Aceh Tamiang district, where waters were several meters deep in some areas.
About 240,000 people remained displaced in shelters in Aceh by the weekend, officials said, after around 200,000 returned to their villages to clear away mud and debris.
Aceh was the hardest hit province in the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, losing an estimated 167,000 people, but the floods and landslides have affected inland areas that were untouched by that disaster.
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