58 perish after dam bursts in Indonesia

CIREUNDEU, Indonesia: A dam burst its banks near the Indonesian capital Jakarta on Friday, drowning at least 58 people in a torrent of muddy water that flooded hundreds of homes, officials said.

Dozens remained missing after a huge wall of water broke through the man-made earthen dam as residents slept, giving them little chance to flee their low-lying homes.

One resident compared it to a tsunami, recalling the 2004 disaster that killed 168,000 people in Indonesia.

Houses and concrete buildings were flattened and buckled by the force of the water, which left many survivors in the suburbs of Cireundeu and Ciputat trapped on rooftops waiting to be rescued.

’This disaster happened so suddenly,’ said Danang Susanto, an official with the health ministry’s crisis centre. ‘Because people were sleeping, they couldn’t get away.’

He estimated up to 500 homes were destroyed or submerged after heavy rains caused the breach in the dam at the edge of Situ Gintung lake in Cireundeu. The flooding in some places was six metres high.

Crisis centre head Rustam Pakaya put the death toll at 58, saying dozens more were injured.

A nearby university assembly hall was converted into a makeshift morgue, where mud-smeared residents searched for missing loved ones among the bodies of the dead lined up on the floor.

Ghufron, a 17-year-old student, said he narrowly escaped waters that crashed into his home, but an uncle was dead and three other relatives were missing.