Flooding in Jakarta: A City Swamped by Its Own Success

Early last year, the World Bank issued an “urgent flood mitigation report” about the Indonesian capital city of Jakarta, along with a $189 million flood mitigation plan. The action was precipitated by a series of bad floods that hit every year in the monsoon season, and reached a peak in 2007. That year, rising waters which forced at least 350,000 of the city’s 10 million inhabitants from their homes, killed 70, caused a massive outbreak of disease, and resulted in some $900 million in damage. Such inundations, the World Bank report suggests, are going to become routine events in Asia’s 13th-largest city:

Well, Jakarta is flooding again this week in the wake of heavy rains, and this year looks to be a bad one. The city, with its booming population and economy, has been crippled by the floods, which are already higher than the 2007 deluge. The waters have reached the Presidential Palace. Thousands are evacuating. Cars sit abandoned in the impassable roads. Public transit has come to a standstill. Travel through the streets, even on foot, is nearly impossible in much of the capital. Forecasts call for an intensifying monsoon over the next few days, and the situation is bound to worsen. The government has declared a state of emergency through at least January 27.