Journalist’s house of Papua Indonesian Journalist Union in Jayapura City – Jubi/JB
Sentani, Jubi – The impact of heavy rain since Wednesday night (August 2) the City of Jayapura and surrounding areas are flooded, a number of public facilities inundated with water and sand material, and trees are float drifted by flood.
The highway from Sentani to Waena is filled with sand and stone materials and mud. This resulted in hundreds of vehicles from Sentani direction to Waena forced to make a long line of queues on the street. The same thing happened in Kampung Harapan and Nendali East Sentani roads.
Yorgen a resident who are cleaning the pile of material said that the material descended from the mountain due to the rain poured the city of Sentani since the night.
“So the rain starts to fall at night around 21.00. Later at dawn at around 03:00 in the morning rain started heavily,” said Yorgen in Sentani, Thursday (August 3).
Purnomo, retailer of gasoline at Sentani-Waena road segment admits that heavy rains are usually brought down material from the mountains.
“A few weeks ago it was like this, the materials from the mountain brought down all the way to the highway and caused the traffic flow to be interrupted, forced the vehicle to Waena and Sentani to queue while waiting for the road to be cleared,” he said.
Not only in Sentani and Waena, Jayapura City was flooded with water since early in the morning. Entrop to Autonomous Roads are flooded to the level of adult waist. As a result, the street is disconnected. Most of the vehicles switched to alternative way.
Head of Regional Disaster Management Agency (BPBD) Jayapura City Bernard Lamia admitted that the current flood have inundated a number of areas around the city. According to him, the worst part is in Entrop Southern Jayapura, Abepura District, Youtefa Market and Organda.
“Even the water level has reached about one meter so there are some locations where the residents have to be evacuated,” said Lamia, as quoted by Antara, while promising to provide rubber boat assistance to BPBD Papua.
The government has not built a good drainage to accommodate the flow of water when the rains come. So it caused the water overflowed into the road and make traffic congestion and piles of material waste from the mountain. (*)
