Jakarta’s floods painful for all, more enduring for some

Jakarta’s floods painful for all, more enduring for some:

Ashen clouds hung ominously over Jakarta on Thursday, one week after the worst floods in six years inundated the city, swamping the central business district and forcing tens of thousands to evacuate their homes.
Workers continued to clean out the lower floors of a sleek office building that was inundated when the wall of a nearby dike collapsed. The flash of water drowned two of the building’s cleaning staff and turned Jakarta’s most iconic traffic circle into series of rivers.

The vast expanse of this year’s flood and the fact that even prosperous communities were not spared has exposed just how bad the infrastructure is in one of Asia’s biggest and increasingly moneyed cities. It has also turned a critical eye on new governor Joko Widodo, who residents swept into power based on populist pledges to fix Jakarta’s most persistent and intractable problems – mind-boggling gridlock and annual flooding.
Major flooding seems to hit Jakarta on a five-year cycle, but each year it hits the poorest, since they live along rivers or in slums near the sea in the city’s north.

When images of an inundated central business district – an area previously immune to flooding – started showing up on television some people called it “democratization,” meaning that now everyone felt the pain of the floods.
“People who live in these safe areas can completely forget,” how bad the floods can be, said Hilmar Farid, a local historian who has studied the history of Jakarta’s river system. “But now that the floods hit the center of the city, I hope this creates momentum for the government to take really radical steps” to solve the problem.

Radical steps means creating more green space by tearing down empty buildings and relocating riverside communities so rivers can be widened. Conservationists say the governor must prevent further land conversion and ensure that the forests remain intact in upstream areas since deforestation leads to water run-off that worsens the flooding.
Water management experts say the causes of the floods are well known to the government, which did extensive studies following the last major flood in 2007.

Big projects such as flood canals, stormwater tunnels, water absorption wells and dams have all been proposed by past administrations, but most have run into technical problems or political opposition. Obtaining land for reservoirs or dams, for instance, requires cooperation with the provincial government in West Java.
Mr. Widodo, who goes by a loveable moniker Jokowi, is backing several of these previous proposals, including a deep multipurpose stormwater and road tunnel similar to one built in Kuala Lumpur in 2007. However, experts say it is not the right solution for Jakarta, 40 percent of which sits below sea level, unlike the Malaysian capital.

Urban planners say the biggest reason for the flooding is a lack of spatial planning and a government that has allowed the city to grow beyond control. Overcrowding strains already aging and poorly maintained infrastructure and puts pressure on land that is subsiding.
Although Mr. Widodo says he’s serious about making hard decisions and implementing them starting immediately, people who’ve struggled to consult and advise past administrations say there are few new ideas in the current government’s response. Without the time to really study the problems, they are relying on past prescriptions and ideas.
Meanwhile, each year Jakarta adds more people. It’s currently population of 10 million is far beyond what the city was built for, says Mr. Farid. He worries that the influx of migrants from other cities is part of the reason the rivers and drainage system are so clogged with trash.

“People have lost all their relationship with the river,” he says. “They treat it as a trash pit.”
As people started returning to their damp, water-warped houses on Thursday, temporary shelters continued to provide food and medicine. Many residents say their homes are still waterlogged, which prevents them from cooking or cleaning.
In the city’s north and west piles of wet trash line the streets. Mud sticks stubbornly to roads and walls of buildings and pockets of filthy water mark entrances to the crowded slum areas that sprawl across Jakarta’s outskirts.

In Pluit, north Jakarta, crowds of flood victims waited for assistance. They say they need baby milk, diapers and dry clothing. Donations from the public and businesses have kept flowing in, but here they are snapped up as quickly as they arrive. When new deliveries land people start pushing and shoving to get them.
“I have four small children,” said Fatima 36, who rocked her youngest son on her hip as women brushed past her to get medicine. “All of us are just laborers, but now we can’t work and we have no more money.”
Fatima says she has not returned home and she doesn’t know exactly what to expect when she does.
“The floods were bad in 2002 and 2007, but this was the worst.”