Indonesia suffers food, medical shortages as Asia flood tolls rise

A farmer in Indonesia's Aceh province dries rice next to an inundated paddy field. Photo / AFP

Regions hit by floods that killed hundreds in Indonesia were suffering from food and medical shortages, authorities said, as elephants pitched in on Monday to help clear up debris.

Tropical storms and monsoon rains have pummelled Southeast and South Asia this month, triggering landslides and flash floods from the rainforests of Indonesia’s western Sumatra island to highland plantations in Sri Lanka.

“Everything is lacking, especially medical personnel. We are short on doctors,” Muzakir Manaf, the governor of Indonesia’s Aceh province, said on Sunday.

Indonesia’s national disaster mitigation agency (BNPB) said 961 people in Aceh, North Sumatra and West Sumatra had been killed, while 293 were missing. More than a million people were displaced, the agency said.

Meanwhile Sri Lanka’s military deployed thousands of extra troops to aid recovery efforts after a devastating cyclone caused a wave of destruction and killed 635 people.

In Pidie Jaya, a district in Indonesia’s Aceh badly affected by the floods, four elephants from a nearby training centre picked up large pieces of rubble with their trunks and helped shift stuck vehicles.

“We brought four elephants to clear the debris from the houses of the communities that were swept away by the flood,” said Hadi Sofyan, the head of a local conservation agency.

“Our target is to clean the debris near the residents’ houses so they can access their homes,” he said, adding the elephants would be used for the rest of the week.

The downpours and subsequent landslides throughout western Indonesia have injured at least 5000 people and devastated infrastructure, including schools and hospitals.

In the city of Banda Aceh, long queues formed for drinking water and fuel, and prices of basic commodities such as eggs were skyrocketing.

Costs to rebuild after the disaster could run up to 51.82 trillion rupiah ($5.3 billion), the BNPB said.

Extra troops

In Sri Lanka, more than 2 million people – almost 10% of the population – have been affected by Cyclone Ditwah, the worst in the island nation this century.

Sri Lanka is expecting further heavy monsoon rain this week, topping 5cm in many places, the Disaster Management Centre said. It issued warnings of further landslides.

Army chief Lasantha Rodrigo said 38,500 security personnel had been deployed to boost recovery and clean-up operations in flood-affected and landslide-hit areas, nearly doubling the initial deployment.

“Since the disaster, security forces have been able to rescue 31,116 people who were in distress,” Rodrigo said.

President Anura Dissanayake unveiled a recovery package, offering 10 million rupees ($57,000) for victims to buy land in safer areas and rebuild.

The government will also offer livelihood support and cash assistance to replace kitchen utensils and bedding, and to buy food.

It is not clear how much the relief package will cost the government, which is still emerging from an economic meltdown in 2022, when it ran out of foreign exchange reserves to finance even essential imports.

Dissanayake has said the government cannot fund reconstruction alone and has appealed for foreign assistance, including from the International Monetary Fund.

Seasonal monsoon rains are a feature of life in South and Southeast Asia, flooding rice fields and nourishing the growth of other key crops.

However, climate change is making the phenomenon more erratic, unpredictable and deadly throughout the regions.

– Agence France-Presse