He left the bus stop, situated in front of Plaza Senayan shopping mall on Jl. Asia Afrika in Central Jakarta, at around 2 p.m.

Heavy rain that lasted from around 1 p.m. until 4 p.m. on Tuesday caused severe flooding in some areas of the capital.

On the road where the bus stop was located, the floodwater reportedly reached as high as 40 centimeters and took over 45 minutes to recede.

Social media was flooded with photos and videos showing the inundation on that road, among other locations that had been similarly affected, on Tuesday.

“If it rains heavily for quite a long time, I usually go home before experiencing unwanted consequences like being trapped by floodwater,” Asep told The Jakarta Post at the bus stop on Wednesday.

“Many app-based ojek drivers do the same because passengers would prefer to take cars instead of motorcycles,” he said.

The heavy rain on Tuesday marked the beginning of the rainy season.

The Jakarta Disaster Mitigation Agency (BPBD Jakarta) issued information on 19 roads inundated by the excess water from the heavy downpour on Tuesday. The waters took about 20 minutes to recede in some areas and up to as much as two hours in others.

An official of the Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) said the rainfall on Tuesday was categorized as high-intensity rain, defined as rainfall between 50 and 100 millimeters per day. Rainfall over 100 mm in a single day is categorized as extreme.

The agency recorded Tuesday’s rainfall intensity in Halim Perdana Kusuma in East Jakarta at 65 mm, Tanjung Priok in North Jakarta at 47 mm and Kemayoran in Central Jakarta at 40 mm.

Bogor in West Java experienced less rainfall than the capital at 30 mm throughout the day.

The BMKG predicted there would be a higher intensity of rainfall for the upcoming weeks.

“[We predict] there will be an increase in rainfall intensity during the last week of December this year and early January next year due to the indication of a convective phase of the Madden-Julian Oscillation [MJO] that affects Jakarta and West Java,” the BMKG’s head of information for climate and air quality, Siswanto, told the Post.

The MJO is a weather phenomenon that occurs in the air surrounding the archipelago, bringing extra water vapor to form clouds in the sky.

The rainy season was predicted to reach its peak in February, Siswanto said.

In spite of the climate and weather prediction, Siswanto emphasized that rainfall was not the sole factor causing floods on land.

“Inundation is affected by high-intensity rainfall and the environmental capacity to enable rainwater infiltration into the ground,” he said.

Siswanto called on the public to stay up-to-date on the latest weather information provided by the agency so they could prepare for the rainy season.

Jakarta Water Resources Management Agency head Juaini Yusuf said the city administration had made several efforts to address this longstanding urban problem in the capital.

As an immediate action, the agency would expand the street inlets, which function to collect water from roads and channel it to an underground drainage system.

“The rainfall [intensity] was high and occurred over a relatively long period. In several spots, the street inlet is not wide enough to absorb and channel water from roads. The [underground] drainage system alone shows no problem at all,” Juaini said over the phone on Wednesday.

When the Post visited the location on Wednesday morning, workers in blue uniforms could be seen working on the road in front of Plaza Senayan to expand the street inlet from the original 30 to 80 cm.

Aside from the drainage channel issue, Juaini acknowledged that several unfinished construction projects and uneven roads had contributed to the inundation.

The agency would cooperate with the Bina Marga road agency to level the concave road, which one of them observed on Jl. Asia Afrika.

Juaini also called on building owners to develop their own infiltration wells, referring to Gubernatorial Decree No. 20/2013 on infiltration wells. The regulation stipulates that anyone who plans to build on a plot of land greater than or equal to 5,000 square meters must reserve 1 percent of the land for the construction of an absorption area.

However, he said the enforcement was another agency’s responsibility.

Juaini also claimed the agency had finished dredging some reservoirs to accommodate a larger water capacity, namely in Sunter in North Jakarta, as well as Kampung Rambutan, Pondok Ranggon and Cimanggis, all in East Jakarta.

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