The death toll due to the flash flooding and landslides on the Indonesian island of Sumatra has increased unfortunately to 21, an official declared on March 10, with six people not been able to be found. Extreme downpour on March 7 led to the disaster in Pesisir Selatan regency in the West Sumatra province, with more than 75,000 people had to leave that place in order to find a safer place as they could have lost their lives. “As at Sunday, 21 people were discovered dead and six people remained missing,” West Sumatra disaster mitigation agency official Fajar Sukma told AFP by phone on March 10. A village situated on a hillside in the Sutera sub-district was struck hard, with approximately 200 families in the region left isolated after a landslide followed by flash flooding, the official revealed.
A senior official from the Pesisir Selatan disaster mitigation agency said water had began to recede after the flooding, but he also conveyed that access to regions which got disastrously impacted by the landslide remained difficult because of hilly terrain. In the Padang Pariaman regency, also in West Sumatra, extreme rain earlier this week caused rivers to overflow and triggered floods and a landslide, killing at least three people, according to a statement from the local disaster agency. Indonesia is easily impacted by landslides during the rainy season and the problem has been aggravated in several places by deforestation, with prolonged torrential rain causing flooding in some regions of the archipelago country.