TheJakartaPost
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Your letters: Before the deluge
With 13 rivers pouring into the basin form of our capital city, the regular floods should come as no surprise
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ith 13 rivers pouring into the basin form of our capital city, the regular floods should come as no surprise. The city's citizens must do what they can to stay dry, and can learn from the Dutch. We could set up a fleet of boats, or build evacuation houses (EH) on unmoored stilts, allowing the EH to rise and fall with the floodwater.
There should, of course, be sufficient provisions on the EH to see out the inundation comfortably. Motorboats will be necessary to pick up citizens unable to reach EH in time. Schoolchildren must continue their schooling without getting wet ' either the schools could be in EH form, or the children could be ferried to and fro in special boats (SB), or both. In any case the children should remain dry and protected, with minimal interruption to their education.
Proper announcements should take place to warn all motorists to avoid inundated city roads that are too deep to use; people could instead enter the city by busway combined with the city-traffic-motor boat service or the SB.
No, this effort is not too extravagant. This would just be a way of life in the capital city Jakarta, until we all move to a safer spot in our wide and bright archipelago.
This is my simple yet practical answer to our capital's floods.
In the meantime, let us be helpful by following what Governor Basuki 'Ahok' Tjahaja Purnama said about anticipating floods, as reported in The Jakarta Post on Friday, Jan. 29, 'Jakartans warned about peak rainfall', by Dewanti A. Wardhani.
Moeljono Adikoesoemo
Jakarta
