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Flood in Jakarta: Water remains in most areas
What lies beneath the stagnant brown flood water that is now an all-too-common site on Jakarta’s streets is a sewerage system that has proven time and again incapable of carrying away the heavy rainfall that hits the city each new year with the regularity of clock work
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W
hat lies beneath the stagnant brown flood water that is now an all-too-common site on Jakarta’s streets is a sewerage system that has proven time and again incapable of carrying away the heavy rainfall that hits the city each new year with the regularity of clock work.
Bumper to bumper: Hundreds of cars are stuck in gridlock at the Taman Mini toll gate in Jakarta on Thursday. Floods that have inundated many parts of Jakarta due to heavy rains on Wednesday night have rendered many roads impassable and caused heavy congestion. (JP/J. ADIGUNA)
Power cuts Thursday left many residents alone in the dark in their flooded homes, and those whose houses had not taken on water were not willing to stray far from their homes in fear that more rain could come.
“I cannot rest or sleep well these days,” Agung, a resident of Kelapa Gading in North Jakarta, told The Jakarta Post on Thursday.
Every night at midnight starting Tuesday, he has woken up to check on the level of the water flooding the street in front of his house.
“If the worst happens, I will evacuate my wife and children to a relative’s home,” said the 38-year-old father of two.
Last year, his house took on nearly half a meter of water.
Debby, a resident of Sungai Bambu in Tanjung Priok, North Jakarta, and Maria, who lives in Bekasi, watched in horror as water began to inch into their homes Tuesday.
“The knee-high flood water entered my house on Wednesday,” said Debby, adding that she had been forced to take the day off work.
“Our neighbors who live in houses that are lower than ours have been evacuated to a nearby market,” 27-year-old Maria said, adding that the electricity had been switched off in nearby residential complexes.
“Yesterday, I opted to go to work because I didn’t want to lose more holiday days because of this. As a result, I ended up having to wade through waist-high water, and I arrived at my office soaked.”
With nowhere else to go, the water continued to rise, including into state high school SMAN 8 in Bukit Duri, South Jakarta, where students watched brown water creep into their classrooms, forcing the school’s more than 1,000 students to vacate the building.
“We just inspected the school’s condition, and we’ve decided to move school activities outside so that the students can concentrate on their studies without being distracted by the fear of possible flooding,” Mursid, head of the South Jakarta Education Agency, said as quoted by beritajakarta.com
Starting Friday, the students will study at the agency’s training office in Kuningan, South Jakarta.
The flood came to the doorsteps of houses that have never flooded before.
Including that of Indra Tri, who lives and works in Tanah Abang, Central Jakarta. She bemoaned having to take lengthy, congested alternative routes in order to move around the city.
“Last night, I drove from Menteng [in Central Jakarta] to Pancoran [in South Jakarta] for about one-and-a-half hours because I had to take alternative streets to avoid areas of inundation and fallen trees on the main road in the Semanggi area.”
On a normal day, the journey might take 15 minutes by car.
