Flood and landslide death toll rises in Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and Sri Lanka
Survivors have described ’unstoppable’ waves of water that arrived without warning as disturbing satellite pictures show the devastation across multiple parts of Asia.
Governments and aid groups in Indonesia and Sri Lanka are working to rush aid to hundreds of thousands stranded by deadly flooding that has killed more than 1,300 people in four countries.
Separate weather systems brought torrential, extended rainfall to the island of Sri Lanka and large parts of Indonesia’s Sumatra, southern Thailand and northern Malaysia last week.
Much of the region is currently in its monsoon season but climate change is producing more extreme rain events and turbocharging storms.
The World Health Organisation 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”.
On Monday, Indonesia’s government said it was sending 34,000 tons of rice and 6.8 million litres of cooking oil to the three worst-affected provinces, Aceh, North Sumatra and West Sumatra.
“There can be no delays,” Agriculture Minister Andi Amran Sulaiman said. But Alfian, a resident in Banda Aceh, told AFP the government had been “very slow, especially in ensuring basic necessities”.
Even areas that were not directly affected were seeing shortages because of blocked transport links.
In Dolok Sanggul in North Sumatra, one resident told AFP he had been lining up since Monday afternoon for fuel, and spent the night sleeping in his car.
“When we were about to enter the gas station, the fuel ran out,” he said. Aid groups warned that local markets were running out of essential supplies and prices had tripled.
By Tuesday afternoon, the toll across Sumatra had risen to 712, but the number of missing was also rising, with 500 people still listed.
And 1.2 million people have been forced from their homes, the disaster agency said.
Survivors have described terrifying waves of water that arrived without warning. In East Aceh, Zamzami said the floodwaters had been “unstoppable, like a tsunami wave”.
“We can’t explain how big the water seemed, it was truly extraordinary,” said the 33-year-old,
The relentless rains left residents clinging to rooftops awaiting rescue by boat or helicopter, and cut entire villages off from assistance.
Arriving in North Sumatra on Monday, 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 cut-off areas, he added.
Prabowo is 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, Prabowo has also avoided publicly calling for international assistance.
The toll is the deadliest 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.
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 in tears.
“In other places, there were a lot of people who died. We are grateful that we are healthy.”
Meanwhile, in Sri Lanka, the death toll from floods and landslides caused by Cyclone Ditwah rose sharply.
A separate storm brought heavy rains across all of Sri Lanka, triggering flash floods and deadly landslides that killed at least 465 people.
Another 366 remain missing, and an official in the central town of Welimada told local reporters he expected the toll to rise, as his staff dug through the mud looking for victims buried by landslides.
President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has declared a state of emergency to deal with what he called the “most challenging natural disaster in our history”.
The floodwaters came as a surprise to some around 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 the 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 around 31,000 people there and left more than a million homeless.
By Sunday afternoon, rain had subsided across Sri Lanka but low-lying areas of the capital were flooded and authorities were bracing for a major relief operation.
Military helicopters have been deployed to airlift stranded residents and to deliver food. One crashed just north of Colombo on Sunday, killing the pilot.
A Bell 212 helicopter carrying food for patients stranded at a hospital just north of Colombo crashed into a river on Sunday evening. All five crew members were taken to a nearby hospital.
Another helicopter sent from India rescued 24 people on Sunday, including a pregnant woman and a man in a wheelchair, marooned in the central town of Kotmale, about 90km northeast of Colombo, officials said.
Pakistan was also sending rescue teams, the Sri Lankan Air Force said, while Japan will also send a team to assess Sri Lanka’s immediate needs and has pledged assistance.
The air force said two infants and a 10-year-old child had also been rescued from a hospital in the northern town of Chilaw, which was submerged.
The annual monsoon season often brings heavy rain, triggering landslides and flash floods.
But the flooding that hit Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia was also exacerbated by a rare tropical storm that dumped heavy rain on Sumatra island in particular.
In Sungai Nyalo village, about 100km from West Sumatra’s capital Padang, floodwaters had mostly receded on Sunday, leaving homes, vehicles and crops coated in thick grey mud.
Authorities had not yet begun clearing roads, residents told AFP, and no outside assistance had arrived.
“Most villagers chose to stay; they didn’t want to leave their houses behind,” said Idris, 55, who, like many Indonesians, goes by one name.
Across the island towards the north coast, an endangered Sumatran elephant lay buried in thick mud and debris near damaged buildings in Meureudu town.
The waves of rain caused flooding that killed at least 176 people in southern Thailand, authorities said on Monday, 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.
Relief measures rolled out by the Thai government include compensation of up to two million baht ($A95,000) for households that lost family members.
Across the border in Malaysia, where heavy rains also inundated large stretches of land in Perlis state, two people were killed.
The annual monsoon season, typically between June and September, often brings heavy rain, triggering landslides and flash floods.
A tropical storm has exacerbated conditions, and the tolls in Indonesia and Thailand rank among the highest in floods in those countries in recent years.
Climate change has affected storm patterns, including the duration and intensity of the season, leading to heavier rainfall, flash flooding and stronger wind gusts.
– with AFP
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Originally published as Flood and landslide death toll rises in Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and Sri Lanka
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