AFP – Torrential rains battered Indonesia’s Siau island, inflicting a flash flood that killed no less than 16 individuals, with one other three lacking, authorities stated Tuesday.
An overflowing river flooded 4 cities on the small island north of Sulawesi on Monday, the nationwide catastrophe mitigation company stated in a press release.
“Sixteen individuals have been reported useless because of the flash flood,” company spokesman Abdul Muhari stated, including that groups have been looking for the three lacking.
He stated 22 individuals have been injured and practically 700 villagers displaced.
“The flash flood was triggered by heavy-intensity rain that had drenched the world because the early hours, inflicting the river’s water circulate to surge out of the blue,” Abdul stated.
Photographs shared by the search and rescue company confirmed huge rocks and uprooted bushes that have been swept away.
The flood minimize off entry to some roads and broken dozens of houses in addition to public buildings and infrastructure, the spokesman stated.
Floods are frequent in Indonesia in the course of the wet season, which generally lasts between October and March.
Tropical storms and intense monsoon rains have pummeled elements of South and Southeast Asia late final 12 months, triggering lethal landslides and floods from the rainforests of Indonesia’s Sumatra to highland plantations in Sri Lanka.
Indonesian authorities say no less than 1,178 individuals have been killed in Sumatra, and greater than 240,000 displaced.
Whereas the annual monsoon season usually brings heavy rain to Indonesia, the Sumatra deluge in November was among the many worst disasters to strike the island since a magnitude-9.1 earthquake triggered an enormous tsunami in 2004.
© Agence France-Presse
