Jakarta Post-Jan 11
After enduring a prolonged dry season due to El Niño, a large part of Indonesia endured hydrometeorological disasters such as floods and landslides for most of last year, a trend likely to continue in the next few months, the country’s disaster agency has warned. Throughout 2024, the National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) recorded a total of 2,107 incidents of disasters that claimed at least 547 lives, displacing over 6.3 million others and destroying around 60,000 homes across the country. The figure was less than half of the 5,400 incidents in 2023. But the decline was due to a new method used by the BNPB to classify an event as a disaster, which should now either result in at least one casualty, impact 50 people or damage five buildings, among other criteria. More than half of the 2024 disasters, around 1,088 incidents, were floods. Extreme weather events trailed as the second-most common occurrence at 455 incidents. While El Niño was the main regional factor that drove a high number of forest and land fires in 2023, it was La Niña’s turn last year, which brought wetter and colder winds to the archipelago, said BNPB spokesperson Abdul Muhari. “This caused rainfall to be higher than average, making floods and other extreme weather events the most frequent disasters last year,” Abdul said in a press briefing on Tuesday. Of the 547 people killed or missing, around eight out of 10 were caused by either floods or landslides, according to the BNPB data. One of the deadliest disasters recorded last year was the flash flood and lahar flow hitting Agam regency in West Sumatra in May. The incident killed at least 56 people with 10 missing. Read more at:
