The death toll from the flooding and landslides on Indonesia’s Sumatra island has surged to 417, according to officials.
Earlier on Sunday, the figure had already exceeded 300 as rescue teams struggled to reach stranded communities. Major roads remain cut off, while internet and electricity services are only partly restored.
Heavy monsoon rains, intensified by tropical storms, have triggered some of the most devastating floods seen in South East Asia in years. Hundreds of people have died or gone missing in Malaysia and Thailand, and millions across the region are dealing with widespread destruction.
Thailand’s official death toll stands at 170, while authorities in Malaysia’s northern state of Perlis have confirmed two fatalities.
In Sri Lanka, nearly 160 people have been killed following a severe spell of extreme weather that brought destructive flooding and mudslides.
An exceptionally rare tropical storm, named Cyclone Senyar, caused catastrophic landslides and flooding in Indonesia, with homes swept away and thousands of buildings submerged.
“The current was very fast, in a matter of seconds it reached the streets, entered the houses,” a resident in Indonesia’s Aceh Province, Arini Amalia, said.
She and her grandmother raced to a relative’s house on higher terrain. On returning the following day to retrieve some belongings, she said the flood had completely swallowed the house: “It’s already sunk.”
After waters rapidly rose in West Sumatra and submerged his home, Meri Osman said he was “swept away by the current” and clung onto a clothesline until he was rescued.
“During the flood, everything was gone,” a resident of Bireuen in Sumatra’s Aceh province told news agency Reuters. “I wanted to save my clothes, but my house came down.”
The bad weather has hampered rescue operations, and while tens of thousands of people have been evacuated, hundreds are still stranded, the Indonesian disaster agency said.
In Tapanuli, the worst-affected area, residents have reportedly ransacked shops in search of food.
Pressure is mounting on Jakarta to declare a national disaster in Sumatra to enable a faster and more co-ordinated response.
In Thailand’s southern Songkhla province, water rose 3m (10ft) and at least 145 people died in one of the worst floods in a decade.
Across the 10 provinces hit by flooding, more than 3.8 million people have been affected, the government said on Saturday.
The city of Hat Yai experienced 335mm of rainfall in a single day last week – the heaviest in 300 years. As waters receded, officials recorded a sharp rise in the death toll.
At one hospital in Hat Yai, workers were forced to move bodies to refrigerated trucks after the morgue became overwhelmed, news agency AFP reported.
“We were stuck in the water for seven days and no agency came to help,” Hat Yai resident Thanita Khiawhom told BBC Thai.
The government has promised relief measures, including compensation of up to two million baht ($62,000) for households that had lost family members.
BBC
