Indonesia: Flood search ends with 19 still missing

By Ainur Rohmah

TUBAN, Indonesia (AA) - Two weeks after a flash flood left some villages on Indonesia's Java island more than two meters deep in water rescuers have announced they have given up the search for survivors.

Many of those who died were asleep on the evening of Sept. 20 when waters rushed through homes in Garut Regency, West Java burying them in mud.

National SAR Agency spokesperson Sutopo Purwo Nugroho told Anadolu Agency on Tuesday that the search stopped overnight

"Until the rescue operation ended, there were 34 people dead and 19 still missing," he said.

Disaster agency head Willem Rampangilei has said that relief teams and army personnel were forced to utilize drones to assess the scale of destruction from the air, after the flood overturned cars, destroyed buildings, and left streets strewn with mud and debris.

Soon after the incident, Garut Regent Rudy Gunawan said that the flash flood had been triggered by prolonged heavy rain, which caused the local Cimanuk River to overflow as it could not contain such a large volume of water.

"The river is silted and the environment has suffered from heavy damage, including deforestation in the upstream region," local newsite Kompas.com reported him as saying.