CIRENDEU, INDONESIA (AP) - A dam burst outside Indonesia’s capital early Friday sending a 10-foot-high wave of water crashing into a crowded neighborhood, killing at least 21 people and submerging hundreds of houses, officials said. More than a dozen others were missing.
Rescuers who used rubber rafts to try 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.
Pakaya said 21 bodies had been recovered and that at least a dozen others were reported missing.
The 32-foot-high (10-meter-high) dam, which was holding back around 70 million cubic feet (2 million cubic meters) of water at 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 are still 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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