Singapore/Jakarta: Local governments on the Indonesian island of Sumatra say they are incapable of responding to the unfolding flood catastrophe that has killed at least 770 people because the destruction is too vast and their treasuries too low.

Hundreds of people remain missing across three provinces after a rare equatorial cyclone last week triggered extreme flooding and mudslides, wiping out villages, key infrastructure and communications.

In North Sumatra, the deluge led to debris – including logs, suspected of coming from broad swaths of natural forest razed in recent decades for plantations and mines – crashed into homes.

“Everywhere you look — left and right along the road — there are piles of timber,” Sarma Hutajulu, a volunteer rescue worker helping clear debris in the Tukka district, told The New York Times. “Those are what smashed into people’s homes.”

Walden Sitanggang, a pastor and an environmental activist, said from North Sumatra: “I saw it myself in the field; there were so many logs being carried away.

“Logs don’t just fall from the sky – they must have come from logging activities upstream.”

Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto this year slashed transfers to local governments’ budgets as part of broader austerity measures to help pay for his major election promises, namely free school lunches, which have been beset by mass food poisonings.

These cuts extended to the nation’s key agencies, including the disaster management body BNPB.

It is impossible to know how effective the local governments’ disaster responses would have been had their budgets not been cut. Regardless, the situation in Sumatra has returned the president’s savings drive, which fed into archipelago-wide protests in August, to the spotlight.

Masinton Pasaribu, the regent for Central Tapanuli in North Sumatra province, said the money left in his budget after Prabowo’s cuts went on “routine spending”.

“So our fiscal situation is more difficult,” he said. “Plus, now we have this disaster. We are now under this condition – complete exhaustion.”

At least 86 people have been killed in Pasaribu’s government area, according to the BNPB.

Despite the deaths and ongoing recovery mission, Prabowo has been reluctant to declare a national emergency. Doing so would unlock resources, remove bureaucracy and ease pressure on lower-level governments by centralising control at the national level.

Some regencies have written to their provincial governments warning that the disaster is beyond their budgets and logistical capacity.

“Considering the huge impact by the disaster and the regency’s limited ability in the form of logistics availability, equipment, human resources and budget, we are of the opinion that the Aceh provincial government needs to take over the emergency disaster response,” one regent wrote in a letter seen by this masthead.

Asked at a press conference on Wednesday why there was still no declaration of a national emergency, Co-ordinating Minister for Human Development and Cultural Affairs Pratikno, who goes by one name, said the president had ordered “all ministries and agencies” to “deploy all their resources at maximum”.

Prabowo told reporters this week he believed the “current measures” were “adequate”.

The last time disaster-prone Indonesia declared a national emergency was the COVID-19 pandemic. The time before that was the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami.

Green groups have pointed to large-scale deforestation as a factor behind the scale of destruction. Greenpeace Indonesia said the majority of river catchments on Sumatra were in a critical condition, citing palm oil plantations, dryland agriculture and other land-hungry industries such as hydropower as major causes.

The administration, however, has focused attention on illegal operations, announcing on Wednesday that it would get its forestry taskforce to investigate.

On a tour of flood-hit regions of Sumatra this week, Prabowo called on local governments to play a bigger role in mitigating “extreme weather conditions that will arise from future climate change.”

This, too, may put pressure on regencies to find money where there is none.

“A special budget for future mitigation efforts will undoubtedly be a joint program between the central government and regional governments down to the district and city level,” said Muhammad MTA, the spokesman for Aceh’s provincial government.

“We do need budget support from the central government given the current regional fiscal situation.”

Prabowo has been vocal about the realities of climate change, even referencing it in his September speech to the United Nations General Assembly immediately after US President Donald Trump had called it a hoax.

But his budget priorities told a different story, according Dr Hilman Palaon from the Lowy Institute, an independent think tank.

“Climate change and disaster mitigation appear to be secondary concerns, overshadowed by other priorities,” he said.

“At the national level, the relevant ministries responsible for these issues have experienced budget cuts.

“Similarly, all local governments have seen reductions in their budget allocations, including those in disaster-prone areas that are most affected.”

The disaster in Sumatra is playing out as Sri Lanka comes to the terms with the flooding destruction wrought by Cyclone Ditwah. The death toll there so far is 465, while storms in southern Thailand late last month killed at least 185 people.

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