JAKARTA (Reuters) -Thousands of people were evacuated in Indonesia’s capital Jakarta on Tuesday after floods swamped the region, officials said, with heavy rain expected to continue until next week.
Torrential rain since Monday has triggered floods of up to 3-metres (yards) in and around Jakarta, the country’s disaster agency said in a statement, blocking some roads and submerging over 1,000 houses and many cars.
Jakarta Governor Pramono Anung raised the alert level to the second highest of the critical stages, calling on the local government to activate water pumps to extract water from flooded areas and conduct weather modification operations – which typically includes shooting salt flares into clouds to trigger rain before they reach land.
Local media reported floodwaters also swamped a hospital in the eastern town of Bekasi, with water entering some wards, forcing the evacuation of patients to other buildings, while other parts of the hospital were hit by power outages.
Rescuers on rubber boats sailed through thigh-high water to evacuate residents that had been trapped in floods since 4 a.m. (2100 GMT) at a housing complex in Bekasi, Reuters reporters said.
The country’s weather agency warned that heavy rain is forecast to hit the capital and surrounding cities until March 11.
“We need to be alert… But hopefully the weather modification could reduce rainfall,” said the agency’s head Dwikorita Karnawati.
Sri Suyatni, 50, said she did not have time to collect her belongings before evacuating and her entire house was submerged in flood water.
“I hope the floods will soon recede,” she said.
The government has started building temporary shelters and distributing foods, clothes, and medications for the evacuees, said social affairs minister Saifullah Yusuf.
Residents were also evacuated to schools, mosques and churches.
The Greater Jakarta metropolitan area, home to more than 30 million people, is regularly hit by floods. But several local media reported the current situation, particularly in Bekasi, was the worst since 2020.
Floods killed 60 in Jakarta in 2020, following the heaviest one-day rainfall since records began in 1866.
(Reporting by Yuddy Cahya Budiman, Heru Asprihanto, Ajeng Dinar, Ananda Teresia, and Stefanno Sulaiman; Editing by Kim Coghill and Christina Fincher)
