ADONARA, Indonesia: Homeless, injured, and with his daughter dead, Sugeng stares blankly as he comes to grips with the devastation left by floods and landslides on Indonesia’s Adonara island.
The 60-year-old was asleep with his family on Sunday night as torrential rain battered the community at the eastern end of the vast archipelago nation.
In seconds, their lives changed forever.
“Suddenly we heard people scream ‘flood!’” said Sugeng, who like many Indonesians goes by one name.
He and his wife fled their home, but their 20-year-old daughter Indri did not make it out alive and her body was later found on a beach. “She was trying to hold on to a cupboard but the current was so strong that she lost her grip’’, Sugeng said.
“We buried my daughter yesterday... I’m devastated.”
Adonara island, home to about 125,000 people, was among the areas hardest hit by the floods and landslides that killed more than 150 in Indonesia and neighbouring East Timor.
The disaster was triggered by heavy rain and wind from one of the region’s most destructive cyclones in years, which ripped across a cluster of islands in the neighbouring Southeast Asian nations.
Far-flung Adonara, dotted with beaches and a volcano, is accessible only by boat. It has no local hospital. More than 50 residents were killed and a dozen were still missing on Wednesday. — AFP
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