JAKARTA, Indonesia — Rescue workers searched into the early-morning hours today for dozens of missing people after a dam burst just outside the Indonesian capital and a wall of mud and water killed at least 69 victims as they slept.
“My prediction is we still have many people trapped in there, so the death toll will rise,” said Rustam Pakaya, the Health Ministry’s crisis center chief.
“I think the death toll can reach a hundred,” he added, as scores of body bags were delivered to the disaster area. At least 72 people were missing.
Torrential rain Thursday raised the level of a reservoir behind the dam to almost 55 yards above capacity, Pakaya said, and “the dam could not hold the water. And the dam burst around 2 a.m.”
At least 31 survivors dragged from the thick muck and floodwaters in the town of Cirendeu were rushed to two hospitals in nearby South Jakarta.
Aerial photos showed an enormous hole hundreds of feet across the earthen dam, as if a giant claw had torn through it. Subandrio Pitoyo, a public-works official, said that because of heavy rain, the water level in the reservoir behind Situ Gintung Dam rose so high that it overflowed the dam, collapsing the earthen wall.
If it had been concrete, the structure would have withstood the pressure and averted disaster, he said.
The dam flooding flattened houses across a 3-mile area where between 2,000 and 3,000 people live, Pakaya said.
People’s belongings and wooden planks splintered by the devastating force of the flash flood lay in heaps along the riverbank as survivors waded through water several feet high Friday. Many others took refuge on rooftops.
A survivor in his early 20s identified only as Alif said he woke up as water rushed into his small home about 500 yards from the collapsed dam. Within five minutes, the floodwaters had reached neck level, he told local television.
He swam to save his parents from the torrent rushing through their bedroom. He found them pinned by dresser drawers but was able to pull them out, broke through the roof and pushed them out to safety.
“When we finally were able to put them on top of the roof, I went back inside to get my niece and my younger brother. I could not find them. Finally, I knew that they did not make it.” Searchers later found the bodies, Alif said, and according to Muslim tradition, they were buried before nightfall the same day.
Emergency crews evacuated hundreds of survivors, including terrified children weeping with fear, from the flood zone. Others paddled out on their own makeshift rafts.
As the sun set Friday, heavy winds and more downpours thrashed Jakarta, the capital, and the surrounding area. The storms have arrived late in Indonesia’s annual monsoon season, which usually lasts half a year.
