TAKE IT EASY: Heavy sporadic downpours over the past two days have caused a number of rivers in the city to break their banks, and have swamped hundreds of homes and forced at least 814 residents to evacuate to temporary shelters. (JP/J. Adiguna)

Heavy sporadic downpours over the past two days have caused a number of rivers in the city to break their banks, and have swamped hundreds of homes and forced at least 814 residents to evacuate to temporary shelters.

The Coordination Board for Disaster Mitigation (Satkorlak) said among the affected areas were Bukit Duri, Rawajati and Pengadegan in South Jakarta and Kampung Melayu in East Jakarta.

“So far, we have yet to receive any request from those areas for more food or medicine. We have our posts in every subdistrict,” said Hulman Sitorus of Satkorlak.

Yati, 45, a resident of Kampung Melayu, said her house had been inundated with 2.5 meters of water.

“The flood rushed in yesterday afternoon. I’ve moved all the electronics and furniture to the second floor,” said Yati, who left her home for a nearby temporary shelter along with her two children, leaving her husband at the house to mind their belongings.

In Bukit Duri, water reached 2 meters in height, and 1.5 meters and 80 centimeters in Rawajati and Pengadegan, respectively.

Jakarta Governor Fauzi Bowo said the vast amounts of garbage blocking the city's sewerage and waterways was the cause of the disaster.

Jakarta has flooded for the same reason twice in the past two years.

“We will try to clear the rivers of the waste within the next two or three days,” Fauzi said.

Another staffer at Satkorlak, Dimas Febriansyah, said the center was not able to monitor some of the city's sluice gates because some of the CCTV cameras had failed.

“We use CCTV to monitor six major sluice gates [out of the 14 in Jakarta]. But, only three CCTVs are working: In Manggarai, Penjaringan and Marina,” Dimas said, adding that some of the operational CCTVs were not transmitting clear images.

Later in the day, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono inspected Cideng River in Central Jakarta and visited the Jakarta Public Works Agency office in Jatibaru, Central Jakarta, to survey their efforts in mitigating the flooding disaster.

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