More than 70 people have died after flash floods and landslides swept through eastern Indonesia and neighbouring Timor-Leste on Sunday, authorities said, with warnings the toll could rise further.
Torrential rain wreaked havoc and destruction on islands stretching from Flores Island in Indonesia to Timor-Leste, a small nation east of the Indonesian archipelago.
The deluge and subsequent landslides caused dams to overflow, submerging thousands of houses and leaving rescue workers struggling to reach survivors trapped in the aftermath.
“There are 55 dead, but this number is very dynamic and will definitely change, while some 42 people are still missing,” Raditya Djati from the Indonesia disaster management agency spokesman told MetroTV.
Mud inundated homes, bridges and roads in the East Flores municipality, where rescuers struggled to reach a remote and badly hit area because of rains and strong waves.
In Timor-Leste, 11 were killed by floods in the capital Dili, authorities said. “We are still searching for the areas impacted by the natural disasters,” Joaquim José Gusmão dos Reis Martins, Timor-Leste’s secretary of state for civil protection, said.
The death toll and the number of injured victims could still rise, authorities warned.
East Flores deputy regent Agustinus Payong Boli estimated there were 60 casualties in his municipality.
“The majority of them, 55, are in Lemanele village. Many people died here because the village was hit by both landslides and flash floods,” he told Agence France-Presse, providing numbers not yet confirmed by national authorities.
Images from Lemanele showed engulfed houses, debris covering entire roads, fallen trees and damaged power lines.
In Lembata, an island halfway between Flores and Timor, parts of affected villages were displaced down a mountain slope and near the coastline, according to an AFP journalist on the scene. Local officials deployed heavy equipment to reopen roads that had been cut off.
Injured victims have been evacuated to neighbouring villages that were unaffected by the flash floods. Images from Lembata showed people wading barefoot through mud, evacuating victims from collapsed houses on makeshift stretchers .
Separately on Sunday, two people were killed in major floods in Bima city in the neighbouring province of West Nusa Tenggara, according to the disaster agency.
Dams in four sub-districts also overflowed, submerging nearly 10,000 houses in Bima following a nine-hour downpour, said Jati.
Fatal landslides and flash floods are common across the Indonesian archipelago during the rainy season. January saw flash floods hit the Indonesian town of Sumedang in West Java, killing 40 people.
In September last year, at least 11 people were killed in landslides on Borneo.
The country’s disaster agency has estimated that 125 million Indonesians – nearly half of the country’s population – live in areas at risk of landslides.
The disasters are often caused by deforestation, according to environmentalists.