Channel Newsasia: At least 13 people have been killed and 40,000 have fled their homes after torrential rain triggered flash floods and landslides on Indonesia's northern Sulawesi island, officials said on Thursday.Rivers on the island's northern tip overflowed and burst their banks, sending torrents of water surging through the city of Manado and surrounding areas that swept away poorly-constructed houses and vehicles.
People waded through waist-deep water to get to safety, while some took to rubber dinghies to escape the rapidly rising flood waters. Many of those displaced took shelter in government buildings and churches in the Christian pocket of Muslim-majority Indonesia.
National disaster agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho described the flash floods as "massive", adding the rains had also triggered numerous landslides across the mountainous region. "Thirteen people were killed, two are missing and 40,000 people have been evacuated," he said....
Manado Bay in North Sulawesi, shot in 2009 by Sakurai Midori, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license
No comments:
Post a Comment