Jakarta Floods

Feb 3rd, 2007, in News, by

Jakarta is awash with water.

Large parts of the capital city are flooded with many thousands having to be evacuated and much of the business life of Jakarta and its satellite cities coming to a halt. Floods have hit at least 33 districts in Jakarta, 16 in Bekasi and 7 in Tangerang.

Five people are reported to have died, three in Jakarta and two in Bekasi.

___________

Twenty people are now said to have died.

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Total deaths as of February 10th are 80, 48 in Jakarta, 19 from towns in West Java, mainly Bekasi, and 13 from Banten, mainly Tangerang. antara


33 Comments on “Jakarta Floods”

  1. Jutatip says:

    Hi guys in Jakarta.

    Hope that you are ok and the situation is back to normal real soon. All the best!

  2. 1ndra says:

    Wew, I don’t know whose junks crowded there.

  3. Colson says:

    Like last year. And the year before. And the year before that. Only worse.

    It will not stop untill an effective watership organization with an incorruptible management, a grandscale reconstruction plan, an army of professional engineers and a lot of money, will start working on the solution. It can be done. In never never land.

  4. Ihaknt says:

    That’s why “BUANGLAH SAMPAH DI TEMPATNYA”. The government and the people will have to work together on this problem. Littering fines should apply.

  5. 1ndra says:

    Yup, governments only works won’t succeed if many people still do littering.

  6. Tomaculum says:

    In the oh so bad and evil western world people take care of the environment more than in Indonesia. They do not throw their waste everywhere as they like it. And there are efforts to develop environmentally sounded methods to eliminate the garbages.
    One good thing of the western world, I think.

  7. 1ndra says:

    Maybe just people’s laziness Tom, as I could see many ‘tong kosong’ everywhere and ‘sampah’ everywhere.
    It makes me nuts, like yesterday, an ‘as…le’ throw out ‘roti kukus’ out from the bus right in front at me in clean area.
    Lucky I’m not driving my bike, if I do, I’ll throw ‘roti kukus’ back in.

  8. Tomaculum says:

    We (my wife and I) teach our children, that cleanness is healthy and beautiful and we show them that we always throw our garbages into garbage cans.
    And here we are again: our responsibility as examples for our children. Maybe someday our brothers and sisters will realise this.

  9. Dimp says:

    It seems that a lot of Indonesians do not have a sense if public property, you can see that they treat public property as something that they can vandalised, they don’t care because it’s not theirs, I think the government has a duty to educate these people to treat public property as their own.

  10. 1ndra says:

    You’re right both of you, we should give them example and in other hand, the government should give fine to litterers or maybe a social works like sweeping and cleaning the streets from junks (included leaves). That will teach ’em.

  11. Rambutan says:

    It will not stop untill an effective watership organization with an incorruptible management, a grandscale reconstruction plan, an army of professional engineers and a lot of money, will start working on the solution. It can be done. In never never land

    The problem is not the money, not the professional engineers but rather the first point you mentioned. This ‘incorruptible management’ you speak of is hard to find in Jakarta…

  12. Raden says:

    The city of Jakarta is a huge dam lying across the floodplain of 13 rivers, each of which helps drain the mountain catchment area to the south. In February 2007 the dam is working so efficiently it is preventing flood water from reaching the ocean.

    There is no solution to this problem. As the years go by, climate change continues to deliver higher rainfall, and due to continued construction activity “Dam Jakarta” increases in efficiency blocking flood water from escaping. Jakarta will slowly turn into a vast permanent lake of submerged buildings and streets. The population will slowly move away, and the only people left will be those living in elevated areas.

    Building the “East” and “West” canals will not solve the problem – those canals will simply admit sea water into the new, entirely man-made lake.

  13. 1ndra says:

    It will not stop untill an effective watership organization with an incorruptible management, a grandscale reconstruction plan, an army of professional engineers and a lot of money, will start working on the solution.

    And good people those aren’t littering the water canal with garbage. 🙂

    It can be done. In never never land.

    Exit light, enter night, take my hand, we’re off to never never land.

  14. Dimp says:

    Hi Rambutan,

    The problem is not the money, not the professional engineers but rather the first point you mentioned. This ‘incorruptible management’ you speak of is hard to find in Jakarta”¦

    Problem is money, we owed like $130odd billion.

    Problem is professional engineers, Indonesia’s education budget is one of the lowest in the world.

    Corruption we have no problem, we are one of the leading countries in term of corruption. We have so many corruptors we are “exporting” them to other countries.

  15. Ihaknt says:

    We can actually tell by the public schools in Indo. You don’t even have to go far into the kampung to see how small the education budget is. Even the public shools in Jkt are bad. Who is the education minister by the way?

    I bet there are people who would (again) associate this flood with religion. Just wait. I wonder when Indo will start separating waste and recycling stuff. It’s hard enough gettin people to put the rubbish in its bin.

  16. Colson says:

    Right, it looks like no individual citizen seems to feel any responsibility for the public space. But then, does it matter? I mean, does it matter without the necessary preconditions.

    To change that attitude of indifference, I guess, one needs local authorities that take responsibility first and will be held accountable. For instance the sewage system should be modernized, there’s a urgent need for an organized selected domestic waste collection and one could do with an efficient metropolitan cleansing department. Let’s dream on and learn to swim.

  17. Dimp says:

    Right, it looks like no individual citizen seems to feel any responsibility for the public space. But then, does it matter? I mean, does it matter without the necessary preconditions.

    Well if you don’t respect public property, regardless what conditions they are to begin with, then you can have the highest conditions to begin with, but they wouldn’t last long as people would just vandalise them, or if they can use it they would steal them.

    For instance the sewage system should be modernized.

    No matter how modern the sewage system is, when people are still chucking rubbish into them, they will be blocked.

  18. Colson says:

    Yep, generally speaking people seem to have a tremendous lack of respect for public property. An attitude that’s hard to change. But should change of course.

    So information and education are important as well. But in my opinion it will be a deadend street, if citizens can not see proof of improvement in their physical environment first. Which is challenge for the metropolitan and national authorities.

  19. Dimp says:

    Hi Colson,

    But in my opinion it will be a deadend street, if citizens can not see proof of improvement in their physical environment first.

    They need to understand that they are part of public, and public property do belong to them so when they vandalise public property they actually vandalised their own belongings.

  20. Riccardo says:

    For an in-depth look into the man-made causes of the flood and the stillborn Master Plan for Flood Prevention, which Ali Sadikin and a Dutch group collaborated on back in the 1970s,

  21. Colson says:

    Okay, obviously we could do with a lot more civil decency, civil commitment or even civil courage. But sheer individual action won’t be of substantial help. It has to become a way of life. And is not gonna be that way spontaneously. No way, I’m afraid.

    It will take a well organized middle class, middleclass values or/and a reliable government to make a new civil attitude happen. A government that takes action and produces improvement first so that middleclass people profit and think it worthwhile to defend public space (property).

    But the middleclass being weak and the government less then reliable, chances are Jakarta will be flooded in ’09 or ’11 or ’13 as well.

  22. Riccardo says:

    Raden, who told you this? Sutiyoso and his merry band of rent-seekers?

    Building the “East” and “West” canals will not solve the problem – those canals will simply admit sea water into the new, entirely man-made lake.

    When the tide is high in the Jakarta Bay, they will close it off, like the locks on the Panama Canal, and massive pumps send it up and over into the sea — where the fish happily feed on the fresh excrement and trash.

    Then entire design and plan for all this was completed back in the 1970s, but corruption and rent-seeking got in the way when Ali Sadikin left office in 1977 and it never got implemented. I’ve put together a fairly concise report with links to the full reports on those stillborn projects. You can read them at the link in my previous comment above.

    This is stuff the government does not want us to know, or wants us to forget.

  23. Ihaknt says:

    Has anyone heard what Bakri said about the flood victims? That man is a disgrace! Why is he in the government anyway?

  24. Andrew says:

    No words from the mango-faced guy.

    Hey talking about mango face, I think Jay Leno also has that :))

  25. Dimp says:

    That is because the people of Jakarta is still lucky enough that the government are doing something, not like Sidoardjo where after 5 months they still cannot see any significant actions from the government.

  26. Ihaknt says:

    No Andrew, he did say something along the lines of “the effect of the banjir is being exaggerated by the medias, it’s not that bad, as some of the victims are still smiling.” That’s just appalling. Easy for him to say as his rumah gedong is not flooded and his pocket is full of money he can easily ngungsi overseas. This is a minister, no wonder Indo is stuck in a rut with leader’s quality like his.

  27. Andrew says:

    Ihaknt, he did say that!!??

    I wonder if all government officials need to take Customer 101 class – even if the media did exaggerate it (which I don’t think happened), there must be a better way to say that without making people furious.

  28. Ihaknt says:

    Yes he did! It has caused an uproar. Try check out The Jak Post and Apakabar Superkoran. The people in our government are seriously f**ked up. No other words to describe this bunch. They’re so greedy and insensitive to the pain of the people.

    ____________

    I can’t imagine if there was snow in Indonesia. Snow storms, powder, hail storm, etc. Then they would have to deal with 2 seasons of floods in a year when the snow starts melting.

  29. sam says:

    re; Ihaknt Says:
    February 11th, 2007 at 6:48 am

    Yes he did! It has caused an uproar. Try check out The Jak Post and Apakabar Superkoran.

    the URL of superkoran is http://www.superkoran.info

    this can be reached also from http://www.apakabar.ws

  30. debate oh debate says:

    Floods? Coming in Jakarta, our “beautiful big city”? What’s happening?
    Well, we also agree that this flood is caused by:
    1. the ‘rubbish’ that is throwing rubbish not in the rubbish bin.
    (hope you are not one of the ‘rubbish’)
    2. the Government has not tried their best to anticipate this problem that always happen each year in Jakarta and surroundings, well, pipes? Where’s the pipes? It’s not even working! And also about the redevelopment by the government (ex: in Menteng) creates even more floods!

    So actually this kind of flood are caused by the Government and also ‘RUBBISH’. But this flood doesn’t see who is their master, they attack every one!

    So God bless you all and see you in the next floods.

    Attention: get stock with a ‘getek’ in your house.

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