Dozens missing after landslides

Urgent mission: A rescue team searching for victims following landslides in the Natuna islands. — AFP

RESCUERS were searching for 42 people still missing after two landslides triggered by torrential rains hit villages on an island in Indonesia’s remote Natuna regency, disaster officials said.

Dozens of soldiers, police and volunteers joined the search yesterday in the Genting and Pangkalan villages on a remote island surrounded by choppy waters and high waves in the Natuna group at the edge of the South China Sea.

There were reports of 42 people trapped in 27 houses that were buried under tonnes of mud from surrounding hills.

Natuna’s disaster agency lowered the death toll yesterday to 10 from 11 despite fears it could rise.

It said on its website that rescuers pulled eight injured people from the landslides, four of whom were in critical condition and had been rushed to a hospital in Pontianak city on Borneo island 285km away.

The landslides displaced over 1,200 people who were taken to evacuation centres.

National Disaster Management Agency spokesperson Abdul Muhari said authorities were still collecting information about the full scale of casualties and damage in the affected areas.

He said two helicopters and several vessels carrying rescuers and relief supplies, including tents, blankets, food and medical teams, had left Jakarta and nearby islands.

“Distribution of relief supplies has been difficult because the injured and displaced are spread out and hard to reach,” Muhari said, adding that the search and rescue operation had been hampered by rainy weather around the disaster site, downed communications lines and lack of heavy equipment.Seasonal rains and high tides in recent days have caused dozens of landslides and widespread flooding across much of Indonesia, a chain of 17,000 islands where millions of people live in mountainous areas or near fertile flood plains close to rivers.

In November 2022, a landslide triggered by 5.6-magnitude earthquake killed at least 335 people in West Java’s Cianjur city, about a third of them children. — AP