As probably been written in side column of international media, Jakarta has been in state of emergency because of flood. This is the worst after 2007, which in turn is the worst after 2002 (thus we call it the five years cycle).
Flooding has started from earlier this week, proven by how some peoples in the office can’t go to work on Wednesday. In my case, I had to turn back on Thursday because the water has been rising on the major streets and started to cut off mobility inside the capital city.
It just getting worse from there.
On Thursday I still have time to go out and take some pictures, but the water has been rising and with the issue, I’m in no position of playing amateur reporter taking pictures of the situation. Also I’m not dedicated enough to cross the water to take more pictures.
The most lucrative business in time like this are by converting carts into ferries for transporting people and motorbike through deeper water. The water level around here has been steady from half metres to more than one and a half metres high.
Price for ferry service ? Last time I heard it’s already over IDR 100k (USD 10.38, which just for the record is more than 5% of current regional minimum wage).
In our neighbourhood we’re fortressing ourselves by building dam from sand sacks. Well, it’s pretty much the only thing a community do on site. There’s no controlling water outside so the rest will have to be done by means of construction after the flood is over.
The water outside has been steadily high ever since yesterday. In fact, this region is one of the last area still heavily flooded despite many areas already have the water recessing.
This has been probably the worst flood locally because in the previous years, the water is not this high.
According to official information, the cause is because part of the wall from the flood canal breaks in Central Jakarta. This made the high volume of water flow into another river, which in turn bring excessive amount of water into the Pluit reservoir.
There’s also talk about the wall near the power plant collapsing and letting the sea water flood in.
This is still around the first quarter so the tide is not so high. The biggest worry is for next week when there will be high tide from the sea.
Best of luck the water hasn’t break in and electricity over here hasn’t been cut off. But the stuffs from downstairs has been evacuated to the second floor of the house.
The Pluit’s crossroad is higher than the area around and made as a gathering point for cars that gave up crossing the water (it’s chaotic). This is thanks to a mall developer who made it taller to ease access to the mall. The mall itself is also built more than two metres above that surface. Yes, they know this area is terribly prone to flooding from the previous case.
The big mall itself is converted into a refugee post for this area, but the food stock inside won’t last long. Got to fall to emergency ration from the disaster countermeasure team.
Animal lover faeries in the internet grand echo chamber have also been screaming about animals left in flooded pet shop, but really, in Indonesia, most peoples still consider human evacuation to take priority over the animals and the officials are unlikely to go on suicide course by getting caught by the media prioritizing on saving animals when there’s still human around.
In other side of the story, those animals are from pet shop, so taking them out would mean dealing with angry businessmen looking for compensation later because now they have someone to blame. Want to save the animals ? Send your own rescue team with your own boat and be prepared to deal with the consequences later, whatever it is (such as providing them food when there’s starved refugee around).
My personal worry is my job. I don’t have my work accessible from home. Later on May and November, the company wouldn’t give a fuck about this flood during the performance report.
What they will see is that someone has missed the target and the higher-ups are not pleased. No, it’s not the fault of any force-majeur because it can’t be asked for responsibility. It will be the employee’s fault for “not working hard enough to cover the lost time”.
