ZCZC
BFF-35
INDONESIA-DISASTER-FLOOD LEAD
Baby reunited with dad as Indonesia flood death toll hits 79
SENTANI, Indonesia, March 18, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – A baby trapped under rubble
after flash flooding destroyed his home in Indonesia has been reunited with
his father after the disaster killed the rest of their family, officials said
Monday, as the death toll hit 79.
The five-month old was plucked Sunday from debris inside a house where his
mother and siblings were found dead in the hard-hit town of Sentani.
The tot has since been returned to his surviving father.
“We took the baby to the hospital and had him treated,” Papua military
spokesman Muhammad Aidi told AFP.
“He was in stable condition and has been released. The father was
distressed but happy to be reunited with his baby.”
The news came as Indonesia’s disaster agency raised the official death
toll from 58 on Sunday, with more than three dozen people still missing.
Indonesia’s military took up the grim task of putting the corpses of mud-
caked victims into body bags, after flash floods and landslides ripped
through the area.
Scores have been injured in the disaster, triggered by torrential rain on
Saturday.
“The death toll could still go up,” said national disaster agency
spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho.
Rescuers battled mud, rocks and fallen trees in the hunt for survivors, as
medical personnel treated the wounded in makeshift tents.
“People need food, blankets, clean clothes and clean water,” Nugroho said.
– State of emergency –
In Doyo, one of the most affected areas, a housing complex was littered
with huge rocks believed to have rolled down from a nearby mountain, while
sediment and waste were piled up on the pavement.
The military said 5,700 people have been evacuated from the hard-hit area.
“We have over 1,000 personnel searching for more victims,” Aidi said.
Disaster-prone Indonesia has issued a 14-day state of emergency in
response to the floods.
Papua shares a border with independent Papua New Guinea on an island just
north of Australia.
Flooding is common in Indonesia, especially during the rainy season which
runs from October to April.
In January, floods and landslides killed at least 70 people on Sulawesi
island, while earlier this month hundreds in West Java province were forced
to evacuate when torrential rains triggered severe flooding.
Meanwhile, three people were killed — including two Malaysian tourists —
and some 182 were injured after an earthquake Sunday triggered a landslide on
the Indonesian tourist island of Lombok, next to Bali.
The 5.5-magnitude quake is thought to have caused the landslide at the Tiu
Kelep waterfall in the north of the island.
Lombok was rocked by several earthquakes last summer, killing more than
500 people and leaving over 150,000 homeless.
Last September, the country was hit by an earthquake and tsunami in Palu
on Sulawesi island which killed around 2,200 people.
The Southeast Asian archipelago of some 17,000 islands is one of the most
disaster-prone nations on Earth, straddling the Pacific Ring of Fire, where
tectonic plates collide. Earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are common.
BSS/AFP/SSS/1735 hrs