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Jakarta Post

Evacuees struggle in shelters as floodwaters remain high

Inundated: Residents wade through water in the flood-stricken Total Persada housing complex in Tangerang, Banten on Thursday

The Jakarta Post
Jakarta
Sat, February 8, 2020

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Evacuees struggle in shelters as floodwaters remain high

I

nundated: Residents wade through water in the flood-stricken Total Persada housing complex in Tangerang, Banten on Thursday. (JP/Galih Gumelar)

Lina, a 56-year-old housewife, relocated herself to a shelter as floodwaters as high as an adult's waist hit her house in Tangerang municipality in Banten.

But the situation remained a challenge for the widow who lives by herself. Cold and hunger struck as she claimed that the Tangerang administration that set up the emergency posts were always late in delivering food.

She joined dozens of other affected residents in the flood evacuation center in Persada Sports Arena in Tangerang. They fled from their houses in the heavily inundated Total Persada Housing Complex in Gembor subdistrict after heavy rains forced the nearby Kali Ledug River to overflow and break the embankment that held back the water on Monday after the flooding started over the weekend.

The flooding affected 1,493 families in six community units (RW) in the subdistrict. Most of the residents had evacuated immediately to three emergency shelters, namely the Persada Sports Arena, which holds most of the evacuees, Al-Mujahidin Mosque in Gembor and Total Persada Elementary School.

As of Thursday, the floodwaters have receded in four community units, namely RW 2, RW 4, RW 5 and RW 10. Meanwhile, water still submerged houses in two community units, RW 7 and RW 8, since both are located near the collapsed embankment.

After living in the shelter for three days, Lina said she hoped the administration would work swiftly to help meet the needs of affected residents. She also said the evacuees did not have access to clean water as the water in the toilets in the sports arena was not available.

She said that the sports arena had always been used as an evacuation shelter. She recalled that she stayed in the same location when flooding struck the area three years ago. However, she said back then the arena had already been equipped with fresh water.

“The sports arena actually has several bathrooms, but the water is not even coming from the faucets,” she told The Jakarta Post on Thursday.

She noted that Tangerang city administration had provided several portable toilets but it was not enough to accommodate all evacuees as people have to queue in long lines before getting in.

Another evacuee, Imas, 39, criticized the administration for its sluggishness in managing the situation. Imas said she has to take care of her ill husband and a fussy 3-year-old son who keeps asking her to return home.

“They [the staff at the shelter] ask for my identity card whenever I ask them for medicine for my husband, but then I decided to take him to a nearby community health center instead and the officers there were fast enough to treat him,” she said.

Gembor subdistrict chief Sobri acknowledged that many evacuees in the shelter were disappointed with the evacuation management by the Tangerang city administration.

However, he said the flood was unprecedented so the administration had rushed to prepare the evacuation sites, adding that the first day of the flood was “very stressful”.

“There were complaints about fresh water as soon as the evacuees arrived at the site, but the city-owned tap water company [PDAM] had deployed two water tanks to the site on Tuesday. I admit that the fresh water keeps running out, but they always refill the water at the water station whenever that happens,” he said.

As evacuees hope to return to their homes immediately, the administration has tried to mitigate the floods by pumping the floodwaters using 45 electric pumps in Garden City and Total Persada, as well as at two floodgates on the side of Bulakan Lake and Ledug River.

“By pumping the floodwater, we hope to reduce the height of the floods in Tangerang, especially since our pumps have the capacity to pump water at 67 to 500 liters per second,” said Agus Tholib, the head of the maintenance unit at the Tangerang Public Works Agency as quoted by tempo.co.

However, as in some parts water had not yet receded, Tangerang Deputy Mayor Sachrudin said the pumps could not suck out water if overflowing water from the Ledug River exceeded the capacities of the pumps.

“We can only pray for the floods to recede and the pumps to work again,” he said as quoted by kompas.com on Tuesday.

Several regions in Greater Jakarta are still experiencing floods as the rainy season reaches its peak in February. Besides Tangerang, floods have also occurred in Kemayoran in Central Jakarta and Kelapa Gading in North Jakarta during the past week.

The Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency is warning that floods might still occur in Greater Jakarta in the second and third week of February despite no heavy downpours or strong winds being predicted for the capital anymore.

“Heavy rains will occur in Jakarta until Feb. 8, but the intensity of rain will be decreasing next week. However, the possibility is floods may still occur in Jakarta until the end of the rainy season in March,” the agency’s head of climate information and air quality Hary Tirto Djatmiko told the Post. (glh)

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