CIRENDEU, INDONESIA (AP) - A rain-swollen lake burst through a dam early Friday sending a wall of water crashing into a crowded neighborhood outside Indonesia’s capital. The flood killed at least 34 people, left more than a dozen others missing and submerged hundreds of homes.
Rescuers, using rubber rafts to reach victims, predicted the death toll would climb.
Health Ministry Crisis Center chief Rustam Pakaya said the decades-old dam, which burst at around 2 a.m. following hours of torrential rain, completely destroyed some houses and inundated at least 400 others.
In some places water levels reached rooftops and Metro TV footage showed several bodies floating amid chairs, clothing and other debris. Telephone lines were toppled and cars swept away, some hundreds of feet (meters).
“A flash flood came suddenly and was horrifying,” said Seto Mulyadi, who said the water smashed all the windows and doors of his house, while he, his wife and four children were sleeping upstairs. “My house is a dreadful mess … Thank God my family is safe.”
Some residents living near the dam said they heard sirens before the disaster.
Data provided by the Red Cross showed at least 34 people died _ figures confirmed by rescue officials on the ground. Pakaya said at least a dozen others were reported missing.
The 32-foot-high (10-meter-high) dam, which was holding back about 70 million cubic feet (2 million cubic meters) of water in a lake fed by the Pesanggrahan river, was built up to a century ago, while Indonesia was still under Dutch colonial rule, according to one city official, Dadang Arkuni.
Authorities were trying to determine the cause of the accident. Some said heavy rains caused the dam to first overflow and then, because the foundation was not made of concrete, to burst.
Cirendeu is in the industrial area of Tangerang.
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