“It’s hard to get supplies there… and there have been landslides in a dozen places,” said Banten police chief Tomsi Tohir.
“That’s why we use helicopters, even though there are no places to land.”
The head of the Suripto local sanatorium, who goes by one name, said injured residents were pouring into his clinic.
“Some of them were injured when the flood swept them away and hit them with wood and stones,” he said.
Around Jakarta, greater than 170,000 people took refuge in shelters within the vast urban area after entire neighborhoods were flooded.
Heavy rains that began on New Year’s Eve triggered flash floods and landslides within the region and within the town of Lebak on the southern tip of Java.
On Saturday, Indonesia’s disaster agency said the death toll had risen to 53 with one person still missing.
“We discovered more bodies,” National Disaster Mitigation Agency spokesman Agus Wibowo said.
Shelters in Jakarta crammed with refugees, including infants, resting on thin mats as food and drinking water ran out. Some were forced to make use of flood water for cleansing.
“We wash in a close-by church, but time is proscribed because an electrical generator is used for power,” said Trima Kanti, 39, from certainly one of the shelters on the western outskirts of Jakarta.
In hard-hit Bekasi, on the eastern outskirts of Jakarta, swampy streets were affected by debris and crushed cars lying on top of one another, with waterline marks reaching as much as the second floor of buildings.
On Friday, the federal government said it could begin cloud seeding west of the capital, producing rain using chemicals sprayed from planes to stop incoming rainfall from hitting the region.
Water levels have receded in lots of areas and power has been restored in tons of of counties.
The health ministry said it has deployed about 11,000 medical experts and soldiers to distribute medicines, personal hygiene kits and food to stop outbreaks of hepatitis A, mosquito-borne dengue fever and other diseases, including infections linked to contact with dead animals.
Coordinating Minister of Social Development and Culture Muhadjir Effendy, visiting probably the most crisis-hit Lebak, said the federal government would help rebuild damaged schools and construct temporary bridges, while offering assistance to victims.
“We are also asking non-governmental organizations to help us heal the trauma,” Muhadjir told reporters on Saturday.
Near Jakarta, a family – including a four- and nine-year-old – died of suspected gas poisoning from a transportable power generator, and an eight-year-old boy died in a landslide.
Others died from drowning or hypothermia, and one 16-year-old boy was electrocuted by an influence line.
During the rainy season, which began in late November, floods commonly hit Jakarta. But this week saw the deadliest flooding in Jakarta since 2013, when dozens of individuals died after monsoon rains flooded the town.
Urban planning experts said the disaster was partly as a consequence of record rainfall.
But they argue that Jakarta’s myriad infrastructure problems, including poor drainage and rampant overdevelopment, have made the situation worse.
Indonesian President Joko Widodo has announced a plan to maneuver the country’s capital to the island of Borneo to alleviate pressure on Jakarta, which is combating a few of the world’s worst traffic jams and is rapidly sinking as a consequence of excessive groundwater abstraction.
This article appeared within the print edition of the South China Morning Post as: The worst flood in years, during which 53 people died
