Indonesians wade through a flooded street in Jakarta, Indonesia, Saturday, Jan. 18, 2014. AP
JAKARTA — More than 10,000 Indonesians have fled their homes in the capital due to flooding that has left five dead, an official said Sunday, with people using rubber dinghies and wading through waist-deep water to reach safer ground.
Many parts of Jakarta were under murky, brown water, while on the vast archipelago’s northern Sulawesi island the death toll from flash floods and landslides rose to 19.
Buildings in some parts of sprawling capital, which has a population of 10 million and is regularly afflicted by floods during the six-month rainy season, were half submerged, with roads unpassable in many areas.
“So far 10,530 people in Jakarta have been displaced by floods caused by heavy rains,” disaster agency official Tri Budiarto told AFP.
Five people have so far been killed in the past week due to flooding, officials have said previously.
Budiarto confirmed the toll and said those killed had either died by drowning or being electrocuted.
However the floods were yet to reach the same level as last year when the central business district was left under water.
On Sulawesi, around 40,000 people were still displaced following flash floods and landslides earlier in the week, local disaster agency chief Christian Laotongan told AFP.
“The floods have subsided but houses were wrecked, and furniture and belongings were damaged, so people have not been able to return,” he added.
Rescuers on Saturday recovered the body of a woman from a landslide in Tomohon city, Laotongan said, bringing the death toll in the area to 19.
Indonesia is regularly affected by deadly floods and landslides during its wet season.
Environmentalists blame logging and a failure to reforest denuded land for exacerbating the floods.
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