Bangladesh, Indonesia, Iran top world disaster risk rankings

Google/AFP

PARIS — Bangladesh, Indonesia and Iran are the countries that are the most vulnerable to natural disasters, according to a study released on Thursday.

Asia's twin giants, China and India, join them in the 15 countries that, out of 229, are rated as "extreme" risk.

The Natural Disasters Risk Index (NDRI) is compiled by a British risk advisory firm, Maplecroft, on the basis of disasters that occurred from 1980 to 2010.

It draws on a basket of indicators, including the number and frequency of these events, the total deaths that were caused and the death toll as a proportion of the country's population.

Disasters include earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, storms, flooding, drought, landslides, heatwaves and epidemics.

"Poverty is an important factor in countries where both the frequency and impacts of natural disasters are severe," said Maplecroft's environmental analyst, Anna Moss.

"Poor infrastructure, plus dense overcrowding in high-risk areas like flood plains, river banks, steep slopes and reclaimed land, continually result in high casualty figures."

According to the NDRI's figures, Bangladesh has suffered more than 191,000 fatalities as a result of natural disasters in the past 30 years, and Indonesia a nearly equal number, the vast majority of which were inflicted by the December 2004 tsunami.

In Iran, the big vulnerability factor is earthquakes, which claimed 74,000 lives over this period.

India, ranked 11th, lost 141,000 lives -- including 50,000 to earthquakes, 40,000 to floods, 15,000 to epidemics and 23,000 to storms -- while the tally in China, rated 12th, was 148,000 lives, of which 87,000 were lost in the 2008 Sichuan quake.

Three G8 countries are considered "high risk," the next category down from "extreme."

They are France (17th in the overall rankings) and Italy (18th), which were hit by killer heatwaves in 2003 and 2006, and the United States (37th), whacked by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

The countries least at risk are Andorra, Bahrain, Gibraltar, Liechtenstein, Malta, Monaco, Qatar, San Marino and the United Arab Emirates.

Moss pointed to experts' warnings of the impact of climate change on rainfall. Disruption of weather patterns is predicted to lead to more frequent and bigger episodes of drought and flood.

"Our research highlights the need for even the wealthiest countries to focus on disaster risk reduction," she said.

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Green activists protest mangrove forest logging

Andi Hajramurni, The Jakarta Post, Makassar, South Sulawesi | Tue, 02/02/2010 6:58 PM

Dozens of green activists from Selayar Island in South Sulawesi rallied outside the provincial environmental agency on Tuesday to protest deforestation of a mangrove area in Delta Bua Bua.

Asrahiyah Abubakar of the Selayar Island Environmental Community said the logging activities could cause a natural disaster in the area.

“The mangrove forest has been guarding the city from abrasion, flood, and strong wind as well as sea intrusion to residents’ wells,” said Asrahiyah.

A businessman, Nasir Ali, has reportedly bought the two-hectare delta from previous owner Andi Raja and started to fell mangrove trees in March last year to clear the land for a dam construction project there. About 1,000 mangrove seedlings also vanished during the land clearing activities.

East Flood Canal to reach sea within days

Indah Setiawati, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Tue, 12/29/2009 8:29 PM

Governor Fauzi Bowo on Tuesday announced the East Flood Canal (BKT) would reach the sea on Dec. 31.

“As we have promised, on Dec. 31, the BKT will connect with the sea. But we have to admit that there are certain spots that haven't reached the required width,” he said on Tuesday.

Head of the Ciliwung-Cisadane Flood Bureau at the Public Works Ministry, Pitoyo Subandrio, confirmed the information, saying the width at some parts of the canal was still 15 meters from the required 70 meters width.

He said the areas needing widening were at the Kali Sunter bridge in East Jakarta, Pahlawan Revolusi bridge, ex-the power substation, Pondok Kopi, Haji Miran, Rawa Bebek and Marunda in North Jakarta.

The unfinished areas, he said, would not hinder the flow of water to the sea as the depth of the locations had reached four to seven meters.

“We have pushed the contractors to connect the canal to the sea by the end of December to mitigate the annual flood in January,” Pitoyo said.

He said the construction of the East Flood Canal was 96.5 percent complete, with the inspection roads, bridges and wire fence as the remaining projects.

He believed the contractors would finish the rest of the project before their contract term finished in June because the city had settled the hardest part – the land procurement – on Dec. 18.

Key river suffers upstream, downstream pollution

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Fri, 12/11/2009 11:16 AM

Up a creek without a paddle: A survey team motors through the Citarum River estuary in Muara Gembong district, Bekasi. Despite frequent tidal floods, the river bank is home to many people who come from around the country to earn a living as fishermen. The Citarum River has often been called the world’s dirtiest river. Courtesy of Cita-Citarum/Diella Dachlan

Despite the country’s ambitious plans to provide sustainable access to clean water for 80 percent of the urban population by 2015, its capital is still struggling to fix an enduring problem facing one of its key rivers.

The target, set in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), starkly contrasts with the fact that the Citarum River, one of the most vital sources of drinking water for Jakarta, is often referred to as the world’s dirtiest river.

Saiful, the new chairman of the Association of Indonesian Tap Water Companies (Perpamsi), said last Thursday in Batam only 40 percent of the urban population and less than 30 percent of the rural population had sustainable access to clean water.

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) stated the Citarum River Basin Territory supported a population of 28 million people, produced 20 percent of Indonesia’s gross domestic product and provided 80 percent of the surface water supply to the capital.

Director of the National Development Planning Agency’s directorate of water resources and irrigation, M. Donny Azdan, said the river, which flows 300 km from Mount Gunung Wayang in West Java to the Pantai Bahagia coast in Bekasi, faces a multitude of problems, which the country is trying to tackle.

“The problem upstream is erosion due to agriculture, which dumps a lot of soil into the river. [Further downstream] there’s also the contamination by farm, domestic and industrial waste that is dumped into the river,” he said.

The Majalaya area in West Java, for example, is home to many textile industries that pollute the river, he said during a river expedition Saturday.

The two-day expedition was set up by the Association of Jungle Explorers and Mountain Climbers (Wanadri).

The Citarum was once a familiar training and exploration area for the association, which conducted its first expedition there in 1985, Abrar Prasodjo, the head of the expedition, said.

“The river is necessary for our purposes. We wanted to conduct a training session in Saguling [West Java] but the water was foamy,” he recalled.

Abrar said the expedition was expected to provide new information that would be relayed to the authorities and the community who would take the necessary steps to improve the state of the river, thus allowing the association’s members and the residents to benefit from Citarum’s water.

One man’s garbage: A man wades in the Citarum River in the Majalaya area, West Java next to a garbage pile on the riverbank. The water is heavily contaminated by untreated waste from textile plants. Courtesy of Cita-Citarum/Steve Griffiths

The heavy pollution of the river is also evident in its estuary in Muara Gembong, Bekasi.

An area in Muara Gembong, ironically named Pantai Bahagia (Happy Beach), constantly suffers from tidal and other floods. The coastline, once thick with mangroves, is now the site of a fishing village where wooden boats have to navigate through a layer of rubbish.

“Its as if the ground sinks lower by 10 centimeters each year,” Erik, a resident, said of the increasingly serious floods.

Carsim, another resident who was in an elevated sitting space to avoid coming in contact with the dirty water, said around 20 years ago, the area had not been as crowded as it was now and the mangrove forest dominated the landscape.

Abrar said the constant destruction of the mangrove forest also endangered the area’s ecosystem.

“There used to be a lot of birds and monkeys here, but now the mangrove is very thin,” he said as the expedition team navigated the river.

Donny said the road to restore, or at least improve, the Citarum River was a long and rocky one.

“We calculate there are around 80 separate actions that need to be taken, which will take around 15 to 20 years to do. The cost would be around Rp 35 trillion, [US$3.7 billion]” he said.

Given this estimate and the fact that the country has over 5,000 rivers with eleven of them critically polluted, would fulfilling the MDG for clean water be realistic?

“No,” he said, laughing. “We’re having problems with just one river!” (dis)

Jakarta Plans to Construct Sea Wall Along North Coast

The Jakarta Globe, Ulma Haryanto

Raising the dead. Workers digging up graves at the Malaka Public Cemetery in East Jakarta on Tuesday. About 100 bodies had to be relocated in order to make way for the capital’s East Flood Canal project. (Photo: Yudhi Sukma Wijaya, JG)

Jakarta Governor Fauzi Bowo has announced that he would construct huge sea walls to protect the North Jakarta coastline from the possible consequences of global warming and other causes of tidal flooding.

“Flooding is not caused by trapped rainwater alone. It can also come from the sea, such as the tidal flooding in Muara Baru,” Fauzi said on Monday.

“Areas such as Muara Baru are the worst affected,” he added. “The sea wall will protect the lowlands of North Jakarta from the threats posed by tidal flooding.”

Fauzi also mentioned the possibility of using reverse osmosis to turn seawater into clean, drinkable water.

“B y using reverse osmosis, as already practiced by countries in the Middle East, seawater can be turned into drinking water. This is going to be a decades-long, not just a multi-year, project,” he said.

As previously reported by the Jakarta Globe, Armi Susandi, a climatologist from the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB), has predicted that Jakarta would sink at an average rate of 1.37 centimeters a year in the coming years.

Armi agreed that a sea wall should be built along the coastline of North Jakarta by 2015 to protect it from the rising waters.

“These walls should be at least 2 to 3 meters above sea level and 6 meters thick,” he said.

Rudi P Tambunan, head of urban development studies at the University of Indonesia, applauded Fauzi’s initiative. He said that last month he was invited to a meeting of the National Development Planning Board (Bappenas) to discuss the prospect of protecting the coastline of North Jakarta from flooding.

“Considering the depth of the sea, those walls should be at places where the depth is 8 to 20 meters,” he said.

Rudi said the project was being explored in tandem with Fauzi’s initiative to reclaim certain areas of the coastline to create small islands and to revitalize existing beaches. He added that the city administration’s plan was to construct several two-square-kilometer islands 200 meters to 250 meters off the coastline.

Tarjuki, head of the water resources division at the Public Works Agency, confirmed to the Jakarta Globe that the sea wall had been included in the Jakarta Spatial Plan for 2010-2030.

However, he said, the project would not start immediately as the city administration would need to assess the details, which would take at least two years.

“The dikes currently built along the coast are temporary, and not for the long term,” he explained.

To mitigate flooding and offer residents protection from tidal surges, the Jakarta city administration has built dikes in some areas of North Jakarta, including Kali Baru, Pluit and Muara Baru. However, some sections of these dikes have reportedly already collapsed, with the worst failures in the Muara Baru area.

Seawater floods worsen in North Jakarta coastal residential areas

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Fri, 12/04/2009 3:54 PM

Seawater flooding, caused by high tides, known locally as “rob”, has been worsening in a number of residential areas in North Jakarta over the past few days as the city enters the wet season.

In Muara Baru, flooding is 30 centimeters deep, while main road Jl. RE Martadinata endures flooding up to 50 centimeters deep.

Sarman, a local resident in Muara Baru, told tempointeraktif.com on Friday that “rob”, which occurs monthly, also affected houses.

The local administration has been constructing a dike to prevent flooding in Muara Baru. Of the total 3.5 kilometer-long dike, only 800 meters has been finished.

The city administration has also planned to deploy a water pump to prevent water from the Ancol River from overflowing into Jl. RE Martadinata next year.

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Canal Evictions in North Jakarta Show Fishing Community Crisis

The Jakarta Globe, Fidelis E Satriastanti

To ask a fisherman to stay away from the sea is to ask the unthinkable. At least that is what a 26-year-old wife of a fisherman thinks.

“Can you force those who have been working on dry land all of their lives to earn a living by going out to sea every day? Have you ever heard of a fisherman living in a building, far from the sea?” said Risma, who knows of the hardships of being a fisherman’s wife.

Passengers on a small ferry negotiating their way between two large vessels. Each passenger pays Rp 1,000 (11 cents) to cross from Muara Baru fishing village to Sunda Kelapa, both in North Jakarta. (Photo: Afriadi Hikmal, JG)

Her family, one of 150 in the Marunda Kepu village of Cilincing in North Jakarta, is now, more than ever, struggling to make ends meet because they have been forced from land that will be used to develop the long-awaited East Flood Canal.

The fishing communities understand the importance of the canal — scheduled to be up and running by Dec. 31 — in reducing the impact of flooding in the capital, but have stressed that the local administration should have considered the negative effect on their lives before evicting them.

Tiarom, 33, emphasized that he is not against development.

“I just hope the government gives some thought to us fishermen. Give us access to fish. Don’t just scare us off,” he said.

Tiarom, whose family has been fishing for generations, said the administration had offered the community low-cost apartments in the area.

“We’d be better off living in our boats rather than living in a building. Fishermen need to spread their nets. We need space for that. There is no way that fishermen can survive living in buildings like that,” he said, adding that 70 percent of people living in Marunda fished in nearby ponds and the sea.

Slamet Daryoni, chief of urban environmental education at the Indonesian Green Institute, said the local administration should have been more communicative and provided fishermen with better alternatives.

“The problem is that these fishermen were never involved in discussions [about the project]. You can’t just change their lifestyles and hope they can adapt within a few months,” Slamet said. “They have been fishermen all their lives. This is what they know and do.”

“It is very obvious the government is trying to isolate them, as if they don’t exist.”

He said the affected villages were located in the middle of the canal project.

“It’s true that most of these people don’t own the land and they have no legal certificates to prove ownership. But I don’t believe isolating them is the answer,” Slamet said.

“They just want to make a living, for their kids to go to school, and if the government could just sit down and talk to them, they’d be happy to listen.”

In order to survive, Tiarom said that if they could not go to sea, they would end up becoming cilong , or ragpickers, searching through garbage dumps to make a living. Only a few would look for odd jobs on construction sites.

“If we go to sea, we can earn at least Rp 40,000 ($4.25) to Rp 60,000 a day if the catch is good. On a bad day we only make about Rp 10,000,” he said. “The past three years have been hard because of the unpredictable weather, and pollution from the surrounding industries has caused fish numbers to shrink.”

Abdul Hadi, a professor at Paramadina University, said only a few traditional fishing communities were staying faithful to their trades.

More than 80 people in Jakarta were killed and thousands more left homeless due to flooding in 2007. Floods also prompted the closure of the city’s Soekarno-Hatta Airport in 2008. Monsoon rains cause flooding almost every year in Jakarta, where the only flood-control canal is too small to handle the runoff.

“We are facing a crisis in this country in regard to the existence of fishing communities. This should be seen as a cultural conflict,” Abdul said. “We can’t force these people to trade off their cultures and livelihoods for something completely alien to them.”

Jakarta Heading for Watery Grave, Experts Warn

The Jakarta Globe, Ulma Haryanto

Floods are an annual event in many parts of Jakarta. (JG Photo/ Afriadi Hikmal)

At least a quarter of Jakarta would be underwater by 2050 if current rates of development projects and groundwater harvesting continued unabated, a climate expert warned on Wednesday.

Armi Susandi, a climatologist from the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB), said the northern part of Jakarta would most likely be permanently submerged by 2015.

“I am talking about Cilincing, Muara Baru and Tanjung Priok”, he told the Jakarta Globe on Wednesday.

“Meanwhile the Soekarno-Hatta International Airport [located in Tangerang, Banten] will be underwater by 2030.”

In a 2009 ITB study on land subsidence and urban development in Jakarta, Indonesian and Japanese researchers showed that an increase in population and urban development activities in the capital was driving the subsidence because of the sharp increase in built-up areas and decrease in natural green spaces.

The problem has been exacerbated by factories, hotels and wealthy residents drilling their own deep-water bores to bypass the city’s water grid, sucking out the groundwater and causing further subsidence. Jakarta’s limited pipe network for clean water means that about 40 percent of residents have to pump their own groundwater.

The soft ground that makes up most parts of Jakarta, the weight of ever-expanding road infrastructure and buildings and the excessive exploitation of groundwater all play a part in the city’s subsidence.

In 2005, Armi, together with ITB oceanographer Safwan Hadi, created a simulation that suggested that by 2050 a quarter of Jakarta would be submerged by the sea.

“Sudirman and Kuningan areas will still be there by 2030,” he said, in an apparent reference to media reports on Wednesday that half of the city, including Sudirman in Central Jakarta and Kuningan in South Jakarta, would be inundated by seawater by 2030.

Armi explained that his simulation had used a spatial and periodical projection of the depreciation of the ground level in Jakarta versus the rising sea level. The simulation utilized what he called a “digital evaluation model,” which he applied to the Greater Jakarta area to project the impact if nothing was done between 2005 to 2050, using 5-year intervals.

According to his simulation, Merdeka Square and its surrounding areas in Central Jakarta would be under water by 2080. “So Sudirman and Kuningan should also be underwater in about that year,” Armi said.

The parameters used for his simulation were an average rise in sea levels of 0.57 centimeters per year, and a ground level subsidence rate of 0.8 centimeters per year. “So the average sinking rate will be 1.37 centimeters a year,” he continued.

However, the World Bank in 2008 said that Jakarta was sinking by as much as 4 to 10 centimeters annually.

Armi argued that the projection he made was according to actual sea and coastline conditions, and with the use of global positioning to measure the rate of sinking in Jakarta.

Despite his less-catastrophic prediction, Armi still called on the government to solve the problem. “Jakarta has to adapt permanently by building sea walls along the coastlines of North Jakarta. The walls should be built by 2015,” he said.

The wave breakers currently being built in North Jakarta, he said, would only help to prevent tidal surges during extreme weather conditions.

“What we need are sea walls,” he said, adding that the walls should be at least two to three meters above sea level and six meters thick to be able to protect the city from the ocean, which he predicted could rise by one meter by 2100. Ulma Haryanto

Child's play

The Jakarta Post | Sat, 11/07/2009 12:58 PM

Children play in a street flooded in seawater in Muara Baru, North Jakarta, on Friday. The Jakarta administration plans to allocate Rp 4.5 billion (US$ 460,000) to build an embankment on the nearby coast. (JP/Nurhayati)

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City to build dikes

BERITAJAKARTA.COM — 11/5/2009 7:37:42 PM

To prevent the tidal wave in Marunda, North Jakarta, the Jakarta City Administration has planned to develop a permanent dike along northern beach. The development fund has been allocated in the arrangement of 2010 city budget as much as Rp 4.5 billion.

Jakarta Governor Fauzi Bowo hoped the development can be realized soon. The dike is important and useful to prevent the tidal wave attacking residential areas in northern beach such as in Community unit number 07 Cilincing, North Jakarta.

Tidal wave has attacked the area Thursday (11/5) at 12 pm. It is because the dike development in Kalibaru coast to east side of Marunda beach has not been done yet. The tidal wave had destroyed tens ha of shrimp embankment. “The dike is developed to anticipate the rainy season and climate change,” Jakarta Governor Fauzi Bowo said.

Jakarta Head of Dept. of Public Works Budi Widiantoro added, the dike to prevent tidal wave will be developed in Pasar Ikan, Marunda, and Thousand Island. “The dike should be developed next year if the council approve the proposal,” Widiantoro added.

Fakhrurrozi for Jakarta Water Source Control Division explained the dike length is about 3.143 km. “The dike is not only built by city administration, but also by private,” he explained.

City administration will manage the dikes in Kamalmuara, Muarakarang, Pluit, Luarbatang, Cilincing and Marunda, while the private will manage the dikes in Pantai Indah Kaouk, Ancol, Pelabihan Indonesia, Bogasari factory, and Sunda Kelapa Harbor.

A giant dam will also be planned for a long term project. It will be developed around northern beach in North Jakarta with the height is almost the same height as Istiqlal Mosque.

Translator: rizky

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Flood Disaster on Parts of Australia's East Coast

The Jakarta Globe

Australian authorities declared a natural disaster along parts of the country's east coast Saturday as heavy floods cut the main road linking major cities, stranding thousands of people.

Torrential rain soaked the Coffs Harbour region north of Sydney overnight, swamping the arterial Pacific Highway with flash floodwaters that isolated almost 5,000 people, emergency officials said.

About 40 people had to be evacuated from the area hit by the raging floods and New South Wales emergency services minister Steve Whan declared a natural disaster, releasing state funds.

More than 500 millimetres (20 inches) of rain had fallen in the past two days, Whan said, in the fifth major flooding incident to hit the region this year.

"I guess one of the things we've seen predicted from climate change consistently is that the rain and the weather events will come in more storms and more short-term deluges," he said."

Unfortunately that's the pattern that we seem to be seeing this year in the area.

"Floodwaters were expected to peak at five metres (yards) at Coffs Harbour on Saturday afternoon before easing, the State Emergency Service said, describing as "drastic" the cumulative effect of recent downpours.

"Weather conditions have eased considerably over the last few hours. However, we still have some 4,800 people isolated by floodwaters in a number of north-coast communities," said SES spokesman Phil Campbell.

Intense storms hit the east coast late last month, generating more than 10,000 lightning strikes and disrupting train and flight services.

Tens of thousands of homes and businesses were blacked out and a man was killed when his car hit a tree in torrential rains.

AFP

An Antarctic ice shelf has disappeared: scientists

Reuters, Sat Apr 4, 2009 7:06pm EDT

A view of the leading edge of the remaining part of the Larsen B ice shelf that extends into the northwest part of the Weddell Sea is seen in this handout photo taken on March 4, 2008.(REUTERS/Mariano Caravaca/Handout)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - One Antarctic ice shelf has quickly vanished, another is disappearing and glaciers are melting faster than anyone thought due to climate change, U.S. and British government researchers reported on Friday.

They said the Wordie Ice Shelf, which had been disintegrating since the 1960s, is gone and the northern part of the Larsen Ice Shelf no longer exists. More than 3,200 square miles (8,300 square km) have broken off from the Larsen shelf since 1986.

Climate change is to blame, according to the report from the U.S. Geological Survey and the British Antarctic Survey, available at pubs.usgs.gov/imap/2600/B.

"The rapid retreat of glaciers there demonstrates once again the profound effects our planet is already experiencing -- more rapidly than previously known -- as a consequence of climate change," U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said in a statement.

"This continued and often significant glacier retreat is a wakeup call that change is happening ... and we need to be prepared," USGS glaciologist Jane Ferrigno, who led the Antarctica study, said in a statement.

"Antarctica is of special interest because it holds an estimated 91 percent of the Earth's glacier volume, and change anywhere in the ice sheet poses significant hazards to society," she said.

In another report published in the journal Geophysical Letters, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports that ice is melting much more rapidly than expected in the Arctic as well, based on new computer analyses and recent ice measurements.

The U.N. Climate Panel projects that world atmospheric temperature will rise by between 1.8 and 4.0 degrees Celsius because of emissions of greenhouse gases that could bring floods, droughts, heat waves and more powerful storms.

As glaciers and ice sheets melt, they can raise overall ocean levels and swamp low-lying areas.

(Reporting by Maggie Fox; Editing by Xavier Briand)

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Fauzi Calls Inspections for All 26 Dams in The Capital

The Jakarta Globe, Arientha Primanita, March 28, 2009

Situ Gintung dam burst its banks near Jakarta, sending waves of muddy water laden with debris crashing into a suburb of the Indonesian capital. (BBC)

The governor of Jakarta said on Friday that following the Situ Gintung disaster he had ordered an inspection of all dams in Jakarta.

“I have ordered the Public Works Agency to check and recheck the dams and all flood mitigation facilities and infrastructure in Jakarta,” Fauzi Bowo said.

“The incident in Situ Gintung was probably due to a lack of routine inspections,” he said.

Fauzi said that he sent his condolences to families of victims and that he regretted the disaster in the Cirendeu area of Tangerang, west of Jakarta.

He said the capital had set up shelters at Muhammadiyah University Jakarta and Ahmad Dahlan University in Ciputat, Banten Province, to accommodate people whose houses had been swept away or flooded by the burst dam.

Public health worker Effendy Anas said that in addition to providing medical aid the city sent six ambulances to help evacuate victims to Fatmawati Hospital in South Jakarta.

Budi Widiantoro, head of Jakarta’s Public Works Agency, said he had received the new instructions to check embankments in Jakarta and would take preventive steps if any weaknesses in structural integrity were found.

Budi said that while the Situ Gintung dam is in Banten Province, on the outskirts of Jakarta, it holds special significance for Indonesia’s largest city.

“It has the potential to hold back water to keep Jakarta from flooding,” he said, “but it can cause floods in Jakarta if it is overrun, as is happening now.”

He said the dam is directly linked to the Pesanggrahan River that runs through the Cirendeu area on its way to Jakarta areas like Tanah Kusir, Ulujami and Cipulir.

Fahrurozi, head of the water resources division of the Public Works Agency, said that embankment berms in Jakarta were in relatively in good condition. Of 26 dams in Jakarta, he said, six had completed berms, including Situ Babakan, Mangga Bolong and Situ Rawa Dongkel.

Fahrurozi said that at each dam there are officials who monitor water levels and infrastructural integrity.

“If they find something is wrong, they should report it to the agency as soon as possible to prevent breaches from happening,” Fahrurozi said.

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