The death toll from the floods that struck the large Indonesian island of Sumatra has exceeded 800, the national disaster agency announced Wednesday.
According to the latest count, the toll stands at 804 dead and more than 650 missing, with over 570 000 people evacuated in three provinces of the island in western Indonesia.
Humanitarian organizations said that the challenge of delivering aid is almost unprecedented — even for this huge country of 280 million people, regularly hit by natural disasters such as the 2004 tsunami.
“Responding to this situation presents a considerable logistical challenge,” said Ade Soekadis, Executive Director of Mercy Corps Indonesia. “The scale of the damage and the size of the area affected are really enormous,” he added, warning that the situation will “become even more problematic as time passes.”
The torrential monsoon rains, combined with two separate tropical cyclones last week, dumped massive amounts of water over some regions of the Indonesian island of Sumatra, as well as across Sri Lanka, southern Thailand and northern Malaysia — for a total death toll exceeding 1,300.
In Sri Lanka alone, the floods left at least 474 dead, 356 missing and more than 1.5 million people affected — making it the worst natural disaster the island has known since the 2004 tsunami, authorities said.
The government estimated Wednesday that reconstruction costs will reach 7 billion dollars.
