Severe flooding across several areas in the Indonesian capital yesterday forced more than a thousand people to flee their homes, with the country’s meteorology agency warning that conditions were set to continue for the next week.
About 1,380 Jakarta residents were evacuated from southern and eastern areas of the city, home to 10 million people, after floodwaters reached up to 1.8m high in some areas, Sabdo Kurnianto, the acting head of Jakarta’s disaster mitigation agency, said in a statement.
No casualties had been reported, he said.
Photo: AP
People posted photographs on social media of residents wading through shoulder-high muddy waters, vehicles almost entirely submerged and search teams evacuating elderly residents in rubber dinghies in the peak of the monsoon season.
“Two hundred neighborhoods have been affected, according to the latest data,” Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedan told local television early yesterday, adding that more than two dozen evacuation centers have been prepared across the city.
“The rain has stopped, but water from other areas is still affecting Jakarta. Hopefully it won’t hit the city center and when the water recedes people can resume their activities,” he said.
The floods come at a time when Indonesia is already grappling with the highest caseload and death tally from COVID-19 in Southeast Asia and an economic recession.
The Indonesian Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysical Agency (BMKG) has warned that the heaviest rain of the season might fall in and around the densely populated capital in the coming days, with extreme weather, including heavy rain, thunder and strong winds, expected throughout next week.
“These are critical times that we need to be aware of,” BMKG head Dwikorita Karnawati said.
“Jakarta and its surrounding areas are still in the peak period of the rainy season, which is estimated to continue until the end of February or early March,” she said.
The BMKG said that Jakarta would be on alert for the next four days with data from the meteorology agency showing intense rainfall in the past 24 hours, with the area of Pasar Minggu, in Jakarta’s south, recording 226mm of rain since Friday.
Far from the violence ravaging Haiti, a market on the border with the Dominican Republic has maintained a welcome degree of normal everyday life. At the Dajabon border gate, a wave of Haitians press forward, eager to shop at the twice-weekly market about 200km from Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. They are drawn by the market’s offerings — food, clothing, toys and even used appliances — items not always readily available in Haiti. However, with gang violence bad and growing ever worse in Haiti, the Dominican government has reinforced the usual military presence at the border and placed soldiers on alert. While the market continues to
An image of a dancer balancing on the words “China Before Communism” looms over Parisian commuters catching the morning metro, signaling the annual return of Shen Yun, a controversial spectacle of traditional Chinese dance mixed with vehement criticism of Beijing and conservative rhetoric. The Shen Yun Performing Arts company has slipped the beliefs of a spiritual movement called Falun Gong in between its technicolored visuals and leaping dancers since 2006, with advertising for the show so ubiquitous that it has become an Internet meme. Founded in 1992, Falun Gong claims nearly 100 million followers and has been subject to “persistent persecution” in
ONLINE VITRIOL: While Mo Yan faces a lawsuit, bottled water company Nongfu Spring and Tsinghua University are being attacked amid a rise in nationalist fervor At first glance, a Nobel prize winning author, a bottle of green tea and Beijing’s Tsinghua University have little in common, but in recent weeks they have been dubbed by China’s nationalist netizens as the “three new evils” in the fight to defend the country’s valor in cyberspace. Last month, a patriotic blogger called Wu Wanzheng filed a lawsuit against China’s only Nobel prize-winning author, Mo Yan (莫言), accusing him of discrediting the Communist army and glorifying Japanese soldiers in his fictional works set during the Japanese invasion of China. Wu, who posts online under the pseudonym “Truth-Telling Mao Xinghuo,” is seeking
‘SURPRISES’: The militants claim to have successfully tested a missile capable of reaching Mach 8 and vowed to strike ships heading toward the Cape of Good Hope Yemen’s Houthi rebels claim to have a new, hypersonic missile in their arsenal, Russia’s state media reported on Thursday, potentially raising the stakes in their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and surrounding waterways against the backdrop of Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The report by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency cited an unidentified official, but provided no evidence for the claim. It comes as Moscow maintains an aggressively counter-Western foreign policy amid its grinding war on Ukraine. However, the Houthis have for weeks hinted about “surprises” they plan for the battles at sea to counter the