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Residents brace for floods as rain starts soaking Jakarta
Having experienced so many floods in her life, Rohani, whose house stands right in front of a river, is doing her best to minimize any losses from floods.
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Jakarta search and rescue personnel help evacuate residents from a flooded area in East Pejaten, South Jakarta, in February 2018. (Antara/Atika Fauziyyah)
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t has been years since Rohani, a 66-year-old resident of community unit (RW) 4 of Kedoya Selatan subdistrict in West Jakarta, put her 1.7-meter tall refrigerator on top of a 1-m high table in her living room.
Even though it looks odd, Rohani said she did it with a purpose -- she wouldn’t have to rush and move it to a higher place in case of flooding.
Having experienced so many floods in her life, Rohani, whose house stands right in front of a river, said she did her best to minimize losses during floods, such as placing a 30-centimeter wooden plank on her doorstep to prevent water from entering her house and putting all of her electronic appliances onto a high table.
She also purposely did not purchase any sofas for her house, as they were too heavy to be moved and would get submerged and damaged during floods.
“The locals have already got used to flooding. We see it as a risk of staying near a river. Since we cannot relocate to another place, we just try our best to minimize our losses during the floods. For example, most residents here don’t have sofas because they are too heavy to move to a higher place and always get damaged during floods. If guests visit our houses, we simply roll out a carpet and ask them to sit there,” Rohani told The Jakarta Post on Friday.
Another local, Mutia, said the community had created an early warning system to help residents prepare for flooding.
“If water [in the river] rises and reaches a dangerous level, it will be announced through a speaker of a local mosque. The community unit head will announce what time the flood is expected to come and ask us to prepare ourselves,” Mutia said.
