Unable to land, rescuers were dropping supplies on Saturday in a helicopter to the survivors of the floods that left 60 dead in Indonesia as well as many injured, victims of torrential rains and anarchic urban development.
Tens of thousands of Indonesians still had not returned to their homes on Saturday, overwhelmed by the floods in the Jakarta region, where around 30 million people live.
Torrential rain from December 31
As further rains are feared, more than 170,000 people living in submerged neighborhoods have found refuge in shelters spread across the megacity of Jakarta.
Torrential rains began to fall on New Year's Eve, triggering flash floods and landslides in the Jakarta region and in that of Lebak, located in the southwest of the island of Java, a hundred kilometers from the capital.
Balance sheets still revised upwards
Two people were also killed Friday after flash floods and landslides in a village in northern Celebes, an island in the north of the archipelago, the Indonesian disaster management agency said on Saturday.
The death toll was raised to 60 on Saturday by the agency, two people missing. The previous assessment reported Saturday 53 dead and one missing. The shelters are filled with refugees trying to rest on thin mats as food and drinking water begin to run out. Some are forced to use the water from the floods to wash and wash the dishes.
The difficulty of getting food
In Lebak, where half a dozen people were killed, police and soldiers threw helicopter boxes of dehydrated noodles and other food to villages that the destruction of bridges has made inaccessible by road.
"It's difficult to get food here, but there are a dozen places affected by landslides," said Banten police chief Tomsi Tohir. "This is why we use helicopters because there are no places to land," he added.
The anarchic urban development called into question
The disaster is the deadliest since the 2013 floods that killed several dozen people in Jakarta, which was regularly hit by floods during the rainy season in Indonesia, which began in late November.
If the torrential rains that fell on the region of Jakarta are exceptional, urban planners noted that the anarchic urban development of the megalopolis has certainly worsened the situation.
The Indonesian government also announced in late August that the capital would be transferred to the island of Borneo in order to relieve pressure on the island of Java, the most densely populated in the archipelago.
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