Jessica Rawnsley
Torrential rains have triggered floods and landslides across parts of southern Asia, killing about 700 people.
Monsoon rain exacerbated by tropical storms caused some of the region’s worst flooding in years, with millions affected in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Sri Lanka.
Intense rainfall began on the Indonesian island of Sumatra on Wednesday. “During the flood, everything was gone,” a resident of Bireuen in Sumatra’s Aceh province told Reuters news agency. “I wanted to save my clothes, but my house came down.”
With hundreds still missing, the death toll is likely to rise. Thousands remain stranded, some awaiting rescue on rooftops.
As of Saturday more than 300 people had died in Indonesia, 160 in Thailand and at least two in Malaysia.
In Sri Lanka, which has been battered by heavy rains and a cyclone, more than 130 people are dead and some 170 missing, officials said.
Indonesia’s disaster agency said on Saturday that nearly 300 people were still missing after flooding devastated Sumatra.
An exceptionally rare tropical cyclone, Cyclone Senyar, caused catastrophic landslides and flooding, with homes swept away and thousands of buildings submerged.
In Pidie Jaya Regency in Aceh Province, resident Arini Amalia told the BBC: “The current was very fast, in a matter of seconds it reached the streets, entered the houses.”
She said and her grandmother raced to a relative’s house on higher terrain. On returning the following day to retrieve some belongings, she said the flood had completely swallowed the house. “It’s already sunk.”
After waters rapidly rose in West Sumatra and submerged his home, Meri Osman said he was “swept away by the current” and clung onto a clothesline until he was rescued.
Rescue operations have been hampered by bad weather. Tens of thousands of people have been evacuated but hundreds still stranded, the Indonesian disaster agency said.
In Songkhla province, southern Thailand, water rose 3m (10ft) and at least 145 people died in one of the worst floods in a decade.
Across the 10 provinces hit by flooding, more than 160 people have been killed, the government said on Saturday. More than 3.8 million people have been affected.
The city of Hat Yai in Songkhla experienced 335mm of rainfall in a single day, the heaviest in 300 years. As waters receded, officials recorded a sharp rise in the death toll.
At one hospital in Hat Yai, employees were forced to move bodies to refrigerated trucks after the morgue became overwhelmed, AFP news agency reported.
Hat Yai resident Thanita Khiawhom told BBC Thai: “We were stuck in the water for seven days and no agency came to help.”
The government has promised relief measures, including compensation of up to two million baht ($62,000) for households that lost family members.
In neighbouring Malaysia, flooding has wreaked havoc and left parts of northern Perlis state under water, with two people dead and tens of thousands forced into shelters.
Sri Lanka is also grappling with one of its worst weather disasters in recent years. At least 132 people have been killed and hundreds more are missing after intense rainfall caused landslides across the island nation. On Friday, Cyclone Ditwah brought more rain and chaos.
More than 15,000 homes have been destroyed and 78,000 forced into temporary shelters, officials said. They added that about a third of the country was without electricity or running water.
Meteorologists have said the extreme weather in South East Asia may have been caused by the interaction of Typhoon Koto in the Philippines and the rare formation of Cyclone Senyar in the Malacca Strait.
The region’s annual monsoon season, typically between June and September, often brings heavy rain.
Climate change has altered storm patterns, including the intensity and duration of the season, resulting in heavier rainfall, flash flooding and stronger winds.
