Jakarta, Indonesia:

The search for 35 people who are still missing from flash floods and mudslides in Indonesia’s West Sumatra province continued on Wednesday, authorities said, as the casualties from the weekend disaster rose to 58.

Heavy rain on Saturday evening triggered flash floods, landslides, and cold lava flow – a mud-like mixture of volcanic ash, rock debris and water – in three districts and one town in West Sumatra province. By Tuesday, the casualties were at 52.

The cold lava flow, known by the Indonesian word lahar, came from Mount Marapi, one of Sumatra’s most active volcanoes. More than 20 people were killed when Marapi erupted in December. A series of eruptions have followed since.

The national disaster and management agency BNPB will focus the search for the missing people in areas near rivers and clean the main roads from the large rocks, debris, and mud brought by the floods, its head Suharyanto said in a statement on Wednesday.

Video shared by BNPB showed logs, rocks and mud strewn over roads in Tanah Datar district, with some collapsed bridges and houses.

Residents helped by local rescuers, police and military were cleaning houses and mosques from mud. In some settlements, excavators were deployed to remove large rocks and trees.

At least 249 houses, 225 hectares (556 acres) of land, including rice fields, 19 bridges and most of the main roads were damaged in three districts and one town.

Indonesia’s meteorology agency BMKG said it planned to try to mitigate heavy rainfall expected for the next week in West Sumatra by “cloud seeding” to prevent rains in the worst affected areas.

Widely used in Indonesia, cloud seeding involves shooting salt flares into clouds to trigger rainfall in dry areas.

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People inspect buildings damaged by a flash flood in Agam, West Sumatra, Indonesia, on May 13, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

Rescuers on May 14 searched in rivers and the rubble of devastated villages for bodies, and whenever possible, survivors of flash floods that hit Indonesia’s Sumatra Island over the weekend.

Monsoon rains and a landslide of mud and cold lava from Mount Marapi caused rivers to breach their banks. The deluge tore through mountainside villages in four districts in West Sumatra province just before midnight Saturday.

Also read | Indonesia flood death toll rises to 41 with 17 missing

The floods swept away people and 79 homes and submerged hundreds of houses and buildings, forcing more than 3,300 residents to flee to temporary government shelters, National Disaster Management Agency spokesperson Abdul Muhari said.

Mr. Muhari said 50 bodies had been pulled from mud and rivers by Tuesday, mostly in worst-hit Agam and Tanah Datar districts, while rescuers are searching for 27 people who are reportedly missing.

Television reports showed rescue personnel using jackhammers, circular saws, farm tools and sometimes their bare hands, digging desperately in Agam district where roads were transformed into murky brown rivers and villages covered by thick mud, rocks, and uprooted trees.

Scores of rescue personnel were searching through a river around the Anai Valley Waterfall area in Tanah Datar district where tons of mud, rocks and trees were left from flash floods.

Rescuers were focused on finding four people from a group of seven that were swept away with their cars. Three other bodies were pulled out on Monday, said Abdul Malik, who heads the Search and Rescue Office in Padang, the provincial capital.

“With many missing and some remote areas still unreachable, the death toll was likely to rise,” Mr. Malik said.

Heavy rains cause frequent landslides and flash floods in Indonesia, an archipelago nation of more than 17,000 islands where millions of people live in mountainous areas or near floodplains.

The weekend disaster came just two months after heavy rains triggered flash floods and a landslide in West Sumatra, killing at least 26 people and leaving 11 others missing.

A surprise eruption of Mount Marapi late last year killed 23 climbers. The mountain’s sudden eruptions are difficult to predict because the source is shallow and near the peak, according to Indonesia’s Center for Volcanology and Geological Disaster Mitigation.

Marapi has been active since an eruption in January 2024 that caused no casualties. It is among more than 120 active volcanoes in Indonesia. The country is prone to seismic upheaval because of its location on the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” an arc of volcanoes and fault lines encircling the Pacific Basin.

Rescuers put the body of a victim of a flash flood on a gurney at a local community health center in Padang Pariaman, West Sumatra, Indonesia, on May 12, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

Heavy rain brought floods and landslides to Indonesia’s province of West Sumatra, killing at least 28, with four still missing, authorities said on May 12.

“There are 28 people killed, and we are still searching for four others who are missing,” Abdul Malik, the chief of the provincial rescue team, told Reuters.

The national disaster management agency BNPB said in a statement that flooding since Saturday night had brought mud to the Tanah Datar regency, affecting five sub-districts.

BNPB said its latest assessment showed 84 housing units and 16 bridges were affected by the disaster, adding that heavy equipment had been deployed to speed up the clearing of road access.