Attachments
Period covered by this update: 1–20 February 2013
Summary: CHF 339,096 was allocated from the Federation’s Disaster Relief Emergency Fund (DREF) on 30 January 2013 to support the National Society in delivering assistance to some 25,000 beneficiaries, or to replenish disaster preparedness stocks over the period of two months.
Indonesia’s longest rainy season is between November and February of every year. This year, the rainy season has been extreme, consisting of many heavy storms over the city of Jakarta and its surrounding towns. An initial emergency period was announced for Jakarta starting 17 January 2013 through the end of January as thousands of buildings and homes were flooded, bringing traffic to a standstill in the city of 9.6 million people. At its peak, the floods immersed more than 97,000 homes and affected almost 250,000 people. At the end of January, flood waters subsided in most locations around Jakarta, leaving a few others still submerged due to ongoing rain, high tides and blocked flood canals. At the time, even though there was still a risk of ongoing flooding, the governor declared the emergency period over and that all efforts were to be focused on repairs and cleaning of facilities to enable a quick and safe return of those displaced. The clean-up of homes, roads, canals and buildings began in early February and since then, most locations have remained relatively dry with the exception of several areas in Bekasi, Bogor, and Bandung as well as parts of East and South Jakarta.
Since the first day of the flood, the Indonesian Red Cross (Palang Merah Indonesia/PMI) has been actively providing relief support with cooked food, relief items, drinking water, emergency health services, hygiene awareness and psychosocial support activities. PMI is now engaged in the initial stages of the clean-up operation. Unless there is further significant rainfall, this urban flood response programme is expected to be completed by mid-March 2013.
With the assistance of the DREF, PMI launched its emergency response through the deployment of relief items as well as the replenishment of disaster preparedness stock as needed. Contributions towards this DREF operation have been made by the Canadian Red Cross/Canadian government, and Netherlands Red Cross/Netherlands government as well as the Coca-Cola Foundation and Kraft Foods. Funding has also been replenished via residual funds from the 2004 Tsunami operation. IFRC would like to thank all donors for their invaluable and generous support of the DREF.