CIREUNDEU (Indonesia), March 27: A dam burst its banks near the Indonesian capital Jakarta on Friday morning, drowning 52 people in a deadly torrent of muddy water that flooded hundreds of homes, health ministry officials said.

Dozens were also missing after water broke through the man-made earthen dam overnight while people were asleep, giving them little chance to flee a wall of gushing water that came crashing into low-lying homes. One resident compared it to a tsunami.

Houses and concrete buildings were flattened and buckled by the force of the water, which left many survivors in the Jakarta suburb of Cireundeu trapped on rooftops waiting to be rescued.

“This disaster happened so suddenly,” said Danang Susanto, an official with the health ministry’s crisis centre. “Because people were sleeping they couldn’t get away.”

He estimated up to 500 homes were destroyed or submerged after heavy rains caused the breach in the earthen dam at the edge of Situ Gintung lake in Cireundeu. The flooding in some places was six metres high.

“Residents are being evacuated. About half of them are still on rooftops,” said Rustam Pakaya, who heads the crisis centre.

A nearby university assembly hall was converted into a makeshift morgue, where mud-smeared residents searched for missing loved ones among the bodies of the dead lined up on the floor.

Ghufron, a 17-year-old student, said he narrowly escaped water that crashed into his home, but an uncle was dead and three other relatives were missing. “By the time I woke up the water was up to my nose. I climbed to the roof to save myself. I heard people screaming and shouting,” he said.

Dewi Masitoh, a 40-year-old housewife, said she narrowly escaped with her husband and two daughters after they saw rising water reach the door of their stilt house.

“We were on the second floor but my daughter went back downstairs when the window broke and water gushed in. My husband jumped in and pulled her out of the water by her neck.

“I punched a hole through the roof and we all climbed up through,” she said, showing cuts and scratches on her arms.

Television images showed bodies floating through the twisting streets nearby and water rushing through the breach in the dam.—AFP
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