LEMBATA (Indonesia) – The Indonesian navy today readied hospital ships to help treat injured survivors of a cyclone that has killed over 150 in the archipelago and neighbouring East Timor, said the disaster agency.
Helicopters are also dropping food and other essential items into remote villages, as rescuers turn to sniffer dogs in the hunt for dozens still missing after weekend floods and landslides devastated the Southeast Asian nations.
Torrential rains from Tropical Cyclone Seroja, one of the most destructive storms to hit the region in years, turned small communities into wastelands of mud, uprooted trees, and sent around 10,000 people fleeing to shelters.
The storm swept buildings in some villages down a mountainside, and to the shore of the ocean on the island here, where several small communities have been wiped off the map.
The disaster agency said sniffer dogs will hunt through mountains of debris and rubble in the hopes of finding the bodies of some 76 missing victims – and any survivors.
About 120 people have been listed as dead in a remote cluster of islands at the eastern end of the archipelago.
Another 34 people have been listed as killed in East Timor – a tiny half-island nation of 1.3 million sandwiched between Indonesia and Australia that is officially known as Timor-Leste.
Its capital, Dili, is inundated, with the front of its presidential palace transformed into a mud pit.
The hospital ships are due to leave Jakarta and Semarang, a city east of Indonesia’s capital, for the disaster-struck region, said Raditya Jati, a spokesman for the disaster agency.
Rescuers have spent the past few days using diggers and shovels to extract mud-covered corpses from the debris.
Hospitals, bridges and thousands of homes were damaged or destroyed by the storm, which flattened scores of small villages.
Authorities in both countries are also battling to avoid the spread of Covid-19 at crammed evacuation shelters.
East Timor quickly shut its borders last year to avoid a widespread outbreak that threatened to overwhelm its creaky healthcare system.
Fatal landslides and flash floods are common across the Indonesian archipelago during the rainy season.
January saw floods hitting the town of Sumedang in West Java, killing 40 people.
Last September, at least 11 people were killed in landslides in Borneo.
The disaster agency has estimated that 125 million Indonesians – nearly half of the nation’s population – live in areas at risk of landslides.
The disasters are often caused by deforestation, according to environmentalists. – AFP, April 7, 2021
