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fficers from the Tasikmalaya Disaster Mitigation Agency (BPBD) in West Java have spent the past couple of days searching for a person who is feared to be dead after a landslide buried a local neighborhood earlier this week.

Speaking to The Jakarta Post on Friday evening, Tasikmalaya Disaster Mitigation Agency (BPBD) chief Kundang Sodikin said his officers had been working along locals to search for the unnaccounted victim of the landslide that hit Karangmukti subdistrict, Salawu district, on Wednesday.

The affected area is located 30 kilometers from the regency'€™s capital on the border of Tasikmalaya and Garut regency. The disaster also swept away a restaurant building, two cars and a motorcycle.

Kundang said road access to the area would be closed off periodically to facilitate ongoing evacuations.

Witnessess said the landslide occurred around 3:30 p.m. on Wednesday, causing residents to panic and immediately flee their homes.

Initially, four people were reported to have been buried in the landslide, Kundang said, but a field check later confirmed that only one person was missing.

A landslide hit a neighboring subdistrict two weeks prior, killing one.

Earlier this week, the Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG), warned that several parts of the country, including North Sumatra, West Sumatra, Bengkulu, Jambi and South Sumatra, would be prone to floods on account of heavy downpours in the regions.

Meanwhile, other regions, including Bengkulu, Aceh, southern parts of West Java, parts of Central Java and West Nusa Tenggara, were said to be prone to landslides.

Located 100 kilometers southeast of the provincial capital of Bandung, Tasikmalaya, home to 1.7 million people, is the second most disaster-prone region in the country after the neighboring Garut regency. Both are prone to land movement, volcanic disasters and tsunamis from Java'€™s southern coast.

His agency, according to Kundang, has mapped the disaster vulnerabilities of the 350 subdistricts across the regency'€™s 39 districts.

Subdistricts considered to be highly prone to disasters, he added, were under the close supervision of the BPBD under the Desa Tangguh (strong subdistrict) program.

He said the agency had trained and had at least 400 disaster volunteers spread in 180 subdistricts.

'€œThis is one of our mitigation measures,'€ he said.

On Thursday, West Java Deputy Governor Deddy Mizwar called on all regional heads in the province to prepare for natural disasters, including landslides, as the country enters the rainy season.

'€œWest Java has become the province most prone to [natural] disasters,'€ he said.

Since earlier this month, local authorities in other landslide-prone regions of the country have also been campaigning to boost residents'€™ awareness.

In Yogyakarta, for example, the provincial administration has installed hundreds of early warning system (EWS) units in areas considered at risk of landslides as well as those prone to cold lava floods from Mount Merapi.

Meanwhile in Banjarnegara, Central Java, the regional administration has established so-called disaster resiliency community groups in 13 of its 20 districts considered prone to landslides.