Indonesia landslides kill ten, rescuers search for 42 missing

Jakarta, Mar. 7 (BNA): Rescue workers are searching for 42 people still missing after two landslides caused by torrential rains that hit villages on an island in Indonesia’s remote Natuna district, disaster management officials said.

Dozens of soldiers, police and volunteers joined the search in the villages of Genting and Pangkalan, on a remote island surrounded by choppy waters and high waves in the Natuna Range on the edge of the South China Sea.

There were reports of 42 people trapped in 27 houses, buried under tons of mud from the surrounding hills.

The Natuna disaster agency lowered the death toll on Tuesday morning from 11 to 10 despite fears it could rise. It said on its website that rescuers had pulled eight people injured from landslides, four of whom were in critical condition and taken to a hospital in Pontianak city on Borneo island, about 285 kilometers away, according to the Associated Press.

Landslides displaced more than 1,200 people who were taken to evacuation centers and other shelters.

National Disaster Management Agency spokesman Abdul Mahari said authorities were still gathering information on the full scale of losses and damages in the affected areas.

Two helicopters and several ships carrying rescuers and relief supplies, including tents, blankets, food and medical teams, departed from Jakarta and nearby islands.

“The distribution of relief supplies was difficult due to the spread of the wounded and the displaced and the difficulty of reaching them,” Mahari said. The search and rescue operation was also hampered by the rainy weather around the disaster site, the breakdown of communication lines and the lack of heavy equipment. .

Monsoon rains and tides in recent days have triggered dozens of landslides and widespread flooding across much of Indonesia, a chain of 17,000 islands where millions of people live in mountainous regions or near fertile floodplains near rivers.

In November 2022, a landslide triggered by a 5.6-magnitude earthquake killed at least 335 people in Cianjur, West Java, a third of them children.

NAA