Rescue workers in Indonesia searched yesterday for 100 people still missing after a dam burst, sending a torrent of water crashing into a Jakarta suburb, as the official death toll rose to 77.
Hundreds of buildings collapsed when a wall of water broke through the manmade earthen dam early on Friday as residents slept in their beds.
“The impact of the Situ Gintung dam has killed 77 people and injured 179 people. A hundred people are still missing,” the health ministry’s crisis center head Rustam Pakaya said through a text message.
He said it was difficult to establish exactly how many people had been killed because some residents of the Cireundeu and Ciputat suburbs had the same name.
Pakaya said the ministry had distributed aid packages, including medicine, to the affected people.
Rescue workers continued to work through the day, scouring the mounds of mud and debris to search for missing people after what one local compared to the 2004 tsunami that killed 168,000 people in Indonesia.
“The rescue team is in full spirits to help their brothers and sisters,” said coordinator Suyatno, who only uses one name.
“There is a lot of debris but we will manage to search through it, despite the difficulty,” Suyatno said.
“We’ll continue to search until we are told to stop — if necessary we will work late into the night,” Suyatno said.
The 10m high Situ Gintung dam was built in 1933 when Indonesia was under Dutch colonial rule.
Authorities blamed the disaster on high water pressure following an intense downpour.
One resident, Supeje Sugeng, however said the dam had burst because it had not been properly maintained.
“We’ll see if we should ask the government for compensation. Right now, we’re just focusing on finding the missing people,” he said.
The Jakarta Globe said that such tragedies occurred too often in Indonesia.
“Whether due to lack of resources or just pure inertia, upkeep of major infrastructure is generally poor. Roads are often destroyed during the rainy season due to the poor quality of materials used and floods are a common occurrence,” the English-language newspaper said in an editorial.
Slamet Daroyni, executive director of the Jakarta office of the Indonesian Forum for the Environment, said local residents had previously complained about leaks in the earthen dam.
“The central government and local administrations have been slow in their action,” he said.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese