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An early warning too late
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Flood inundates a housing area in Cipinang Melayu, Jakarta, on Feb. 21. (Antara/Rosa Panggabean)
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fter floods of promises during three months of gubernatorial campaigning, Jakarta citizens this week were caught off guard by waves of deluge that should be taken as a reality check. Floods struck not just once, but in cycles and in an upward intensity. Heavy rains lasting for a few hours buffeted by downpours upstream in Bogor, south of the capital, on the evening of Feb. 15, triggered floods that swamped nearly 3,400 houses along the banks of the Ciliwung River with Cawang and Cililitan in East Jakarta the hardest hit areas. A week later the disaster returned on a bigger scale, affecting thousands of residents and killing five people.
Jakarta Governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama and his team were too prompt and way too confident when the first incident came last week, belittling it as merely “inundation” as the floodwater receded within less than four hours. Only after it became too late, where Ahok conveyed his apology after seeing 54 areas throughout the capital trapped in 1.5-meter-deep water, disrupting traffic and operation of public transportation.
Afterwards came along the litany of excuses from the authorities, ranging from the unavailability of proper early warning systems being installed on the 13 rivers in Jakarta to the unfinished river normalization program.
Floods have become a cyclical if not annual occurrence in the capital. The fact that many early warning devices dot the city’s rivers and tributaries shows that Jakarta’s preparedness for the disaster should be unquestionable. Both the apparatuses and system had been in place to cushion such blows.
With the system in place the three-month hiatus of Ahok and his running mate Deputy Governor Djarot Saiful Hidayat should not give City Hall an excuse for the flooding. Or, should it be a pretext for the administration to explain why the early warning system did not work and therefore the entire system, as well as its supporting apparatuses, is subject to evaluation.
Casualties and victims could have been minimized had the early warning system worked properly even when the flood mitigation system was not yet perfect. Alerting the residents of possible flooding helps them prepare measures to ease the devastation. Failure to warn people in advance of the risks amounts to putting them in a vulnerable state to disaster as the recent floods showed.
This week’s flooding is a wake-up call for the administration to immediately fix its early warning system amid forecast that rainy season has yet to peak and therefore the worse has yet to come. Changes to weather patterns, which is a global phenomenon, underline the need for a better disaster early warning mechanism.
Ahok’s apology might be taken and yes, as Ahok said, the long shot of the river normalization program should proceed to spare the city from future disasters. However, in this point in time, the administration had better focus on relief efforts to help flood victims and launch contingency measures to shun another flood. That may include intensifying coordination with authorities upstream and the Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) with emphasis on improving the early warning system.
