Recent heavy downpours triggered flash floods and mudslides that tore through mountain villages in Indonesia yesterday. Sadly, the death toll has climbed to 79, with dozens of others missing. Now the overwhelmed, disaster-prone nation is looking to other countries for help.
Indonesia is a chain of 17,000 islands where millions of people live in mountainous areas or near fertile flood plains. The country sits on the “Pacific Ring of Fire” and has frequent earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Seasonal downpours also cause landslides and floods that kill dozens each year.
On Sunday, a 5.5-magnitude earthquake hit. The quake triggered a landslide from Mount Rinjani, an active volcano on the island of Lombok. The landslide struck a popular tourist site.
Flooding was worst in Indonesia’s Sentani subdistrict. There, tons of mud, rocks, and trees from the landslide rolled down to a river that burst its banks, according to national disaster spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho.
The number of dead and injured will probably increase because some affected areas have not yet been reached. Rescuers are continuing to search for dozens of people reportedly still missing.
“We are overwhelmed by too many injuries,” says Haerul Lee, head of the Jayapura health office.
Nugroho reports that rescuers evacuated more than 4,200 people to temporary shelters as the multiple disaster damaged and submerged more than 600 houses and buildings.
A spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres says, “The United Nations expresses its solidarity with the Indonesian authorities and stands ready to work with them as they respond to the humanitarian needs resulting from both natural disasters.”
Pray for the people of Indonesia and especially for believers there, who can offer help and hope beyond the many obvious physical needs.
I know that everything God does will remain forever; there is nothing to add to it and there is nothing to take from it, for God has so worked that men should fear Him. — Ecclesiastes 3:14 NASB
(People clean the debris from a house in Sentani, Papua Province, Indonesia, Monday, March 18, 2019. A P Photo/Djefri Pattiradjawane)
