Indonesian authorities have raised the death toll to 30 from two avalanches that took place in the central region of the island of Java recently, during days of heavy and prolonged rain, while 21 people remain missing nearly a week after the last incident.
The first landslide occurred on Thursday last week in the village of Cibeunyingbelonging to the Cilacap regency, in the province of Central Java, and leaves at least 20 people dead and three others missing, the Indonesian disaster mitigation agency (BNPB, for its acronym in Indonesian) reported in a statement on Thursday.
In another incident of the same type recorded on Sunday in the village of Pandanarum, belonging to the Banjarnegara regency, also in Central Java, another dozen people died and 18 are still missing, according to the latest official report collected by Efe.
The bodies of seven of the ten who died in Pandanarum were found the day beforeindicated the head of Data, Information and Communication of the BNPB, Abdul Muhari.
This second avalanche left 48 homes destroyed or in ruins and 195 affected, as well as a total of 934 evacuees.
Search and rescue efforts to find the missing continue this week in both locations, with rain still forecast, according to authorities.
Operations “face several obstaclesparticularly the potential for new landslides due to rain, stagnant water in the landslide zone and the continuous flow of spring water,” Muhari explained.
Indonesia, a Southeast Asian country made up of more than 17,000 islands, suffers numerous incidents related to floods and landslides during the rainy season, especially between the months of November and March.