Indonesia: Floods kill 1, displace thousands in Sumatra

By Ainur Rohmah

TUBAN, Indonesia (AA) – At least one person has been killed and thousands evacuated in Sumatra island despite Indonesia having entered what is typically its dry season.

A National Disaster Management Agency spokesman told Anadolu Agency on Friday that hours of heavy rainfall flooded thousands of houses in seven districts of West Sumatra’s provincial capital Padang, with waters measuring 50 to 140 centimeters (20-55 inches) in height.

"The flooding is also accompanied by landslides in several places," Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said, adding that the recorded fatality was an elderly resident who slipped while being evacuated.

"We are still counting the number of those displaced and houses submerged," he added.

Access to the affected areas has been cut off after landslides buried a roadway connecting Padang to the coastal town of Painan to the south.

"People there [in areas along the roadway] cannot be evacuated because of landslides covering roads," Nugroho said.

As part of its emergency efforts, the agency has been deploying rubber boats to evacuate residents.

Around 10 districts and cities in West Sumatra had been hit by heavy downpours that left at least five people dead, thousands of homes flooded and a roadway connecting the province to neighboring Riau cut off in February -- during the country’s rainy season.

The national meteorological agency predicts that Indonesia will experience a “wet dry season”, with its chief announcing that the country is currently transitioning from the El Nino weather phenomenon -- associated with a band of warm ocean water in the equatorial Pacific -- to its cooler counterpart La Nina.

"As of May 2016, approximately 31.6 percent of regions in Indonesia have entered the dry season, while others will be dry afterwards," the detik.com news website quoted Andi Eka Sakya as saying.

The agency predicts that the effects of La Nina will become observable in different regions between July and September, with weak to moderate intensity.

Areas that may experience possible heavy rainfall during this year’s dry season include Sumatra, Borneo island, and parts of the islands of Java, Sulawesi and Papua.

"To the people who live in the region, please be aware of incidences of floods and landslides," Sakya said.