INDONESIA: Floods strike Indonesian capital, thousands stranded

Torrential rain triggered floods in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta on Friday (February 2), blocking roads and trapping residents in their homes as torrents of muddy water reached a depth of 2 metres (6.7 ft), police and witnesses said. Floods during the rainy season in Indonesia are common, but the heavy rains this week have caused chaos on roads and shut some train lines around Jakarta, police said. There had been no reports of deaths so far, but a string of major roads and fly-overs in the city were closed, police said. "The water started to climb up at 3:30 in the evening and the situation had got a lot worse by 3:00 in the morning," said Hasan, a Jakarta resident. "If the authorities cannot handle it, how can we? We can only accept the condition," added Udin, a Jakarta shopkeeper. Some residents in southern Jakarta had moved to higher ground, Krisna, a police official at the city's traffic information desk, said. More than 80 city buses were stranded in traffic jams or due to lack of fuel, Antara news agency reported. Many office workers could not make it into work, while children in parts of the city took advantage of the extreme wet weather to play and swim in the flooded streets. Outside the capital, train and road lines were cut in the Tangerang district west of Jakarta, Antara said. The rain was affecting a large swath of West Java including the capital, Tangerang and the city of Bogor, home to famed botanical gardens, said Kukuh Ribudianto of the Meteorology agency. He said the intensity of rain had weakened slightly from overnight, but was likely to continue until the evening.

ITN Source | February 2, 2007

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