SIJERUK (Indonesia), Jan 4: A landslide unleashed by heavy rains in Indonesia’s Central Java on Wednesday has killed 16 people but a UN official said 300 people were feared dead in one village alone.
In the village of Sijeruk, 370 kilometres east of the capital Jakarta, ‘local authorities fear at least 300 people’ were buried under a torrent of mud, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Geneva said in a statement.
Local officials also said the landslide covered about six hectares and the mud was up to five metres deep.
The landslide is the second disaster this week to hit the island of Java as a result of monsoon rains and, activists charge, deforestation.
In the district of Jember, about 800 kilometres east of Jakarta, flash flooding has killed 77 people since Saturday, including 71 in the sub-district of Panti, the area most affected by the torrential rain.
According to OCHA, 9,500 people have been left homeless in the district, and nearly 7,000 are living in temporary camps.
An Indonesian official said about 570 people lived in the area, with one section where about 170 people live unaffected. He did not say how many people had been accounted for.
The landslide slammed into houses at about 5:00am after three days of monsoon rains.
Television footage showed workers using two excavators and hand tools to dig into the mound in the hope of finding survivors. Only the top of tiled roofs of some houses were visible, along with smashed timber debris and other semi-flattened brick and concrete homes.
Rescue worker Dedi Suromli said the search was called off due to bad weather and would resume early on Thursday.
“It is raining and foggy and it’s not safe to continue the search,” he told AFP, adding that 95 people were thought to remain under the sludge.
Banjar Negara deputy police chief Gusti Indra Cahyadi told the online Detikcom news agency that the road leading to the village was damaged, hampering efforts to bring in more heavy rescue equipment.
He said the area was prone to landslides during the rainy season but in the past only 10 houses had been affected at most.
The landslide came as rescuers continued to sift through debris and mud in the aftermath of flash floods in East Java province which have killed at least 57 people and left thousands homeless.
“The evacuation of bodies is still continuing. Twenty bodies are still at the scene but they have been included in the tally,” Teduh Tedjo, who is coordinating police rescue efforts, told AFP by telephone from Jember.
Misdarno, from the disaster coordinating centre in East Java’s capital Surabaya, said the death toll was still at 57 but added that 17 more people were listed as missing.
Four villages in Jember district, 800 kilometres east of the capital, were affected.—AFP
SIJERUK (Indonesia), Jan 4: A landslide unleashed by heavy rains in Indonesia’s Central Java on Wednesday has killed 16 people but a UN official said 300 people were feared dead in one village alone.
