Improved weather on Sunday helped rescuers on Indonesia’s main island of Java recover more bodies as they dug through mud and debris in search of scores of missing in a landslide that killed more than two dozen villagers.
The predawn landslide on the slopes of Mount Burangrang in West Java province on Saturday buried some 34 houses in Pasir Langu village. On Sunday, 72 people remained missing, many feared buried under tons of mud, rocks and uprooted trees. About 230 residents living near the site were evacuated to government shelters.
A 250-member search team on Sunday collected victims’ remains, including body parts, in 14 body bags, bringing the total recovered to 25, said Ade Dian Permana, who heads the local search and rescue office. They will be released to relatives once they are identified by forensic experts.
Videos released by the search agency showed rescuers using farm tools and bare hands to pull a body from the mud. Permana said that loose ground on the slope prevented heavy equipment from being deployed. He estimated mounds of mud were to be up to 5 metres high, saying “our teams must move carefully.”
“Some homes are buried up to the roof level,” he added.
The head of the National Search and Rescue Agency, Mohammad Syafii, said teams were also using drones and K-9s to locate bodies along the landslide that stretched more than 2 kilometres.
Visiting the area on Sunday, Indonesian Vice President Gibran Rakabuming Raka pledged that authorities would take measures to prevent similar disasters. He urged the local authorities in West Bandung district to “address the issue of land conversion in disaster-prone areas,” including ways to reduce risks.
Environmental activists previously have said the deadly landslide in West Bandung district was not simply a natural disaster triggered by heavy rain, but the result of years of environmental degradation due to land conversion for development that violated land-use rules in the region.
Wahyudin Iwang of Walhi West Java, an Indonesian environmental group, said Saturday’s landslide — which struck while residents were asleep — reflected longstanding neglect of spatial-planning regulations in the North Bandung Area, or KBU, a conservation zone spanning about 38,543 hectares across four cities and regencies in West Java, including West Bandung.
He said the protected highland area functions as a critical water-catchment zone and environmental buffer for the Bandung Basin, one of Indonesia’s most densely populated regions.
“This landslide is the accumulation of activities that were not in line with spatial planning and environmental functions,” Iwang said.
At a makeshift relief centre, villagers gathered, reading updated lists of the missing and waiting for news on relatives. Rescue officials said the operation will continue nonstop as long as conditions allow, but warned that more rain could further destabilise the slope.
Seasonal rains and high tides from about October to April frequently cause flooding and landslides in Indonesia, an archipelago of more than 17,000 islands where millions of people live in mountainous areas or near fertile floodplains.
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