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Many evacuees have been forced to take shelter along the roadside, enduring scorching heat by day and cold temperatures at night due to a lack of temporary shelters. Residents are resorting to filtering water from puddles left by the flood to meet their basic drinking needs.
A week after cyclone-induced floods and landslides hit three provinces in Sumatra, authorities are still scrambling to find those who are missing and to distribute aid, as several affected areas remain still cut off and awaiting necessary supplies.
The Office of the Coordinating Economic Minister has dispatched around 40 tonnes of food and medical supplies to flood-ravaged Aceh, North Sumatra and West Sumatra, as the government pressed on with search and rescue missions for a disaster that has claimed nearly 800 lives.
About 1.4 million hectares of forest cover have been cleared across Aceh, North Sumatra and West Sumatra between 2016 and 2025 to make way for plantations and mining, according to the environmental group Walhi. The areas hardest-hit by floods and landslides last week were degraded watersheds.
The three provinces have suffered severe devastation after a rare tropical storm formed in the Malacca Strait and unleashed a week of torrential rain and powerful winds, triggering widespread floods and landslides.
With at least 712 dead and hundreds more missing from floods and landslides across northern Sumatra, regional leaders have admitted that they cannot handle the crisis alone, underscoring deep budgetary and logistical gaps in disaster response.
