TAPANULI, Indonesia: In Indonesia’s North Sumatra, Rosmina wades into her home through soupy grey-brown mud that reaches her knees, searching for belongings she can extract after deadly flooding submerged her village.
Nearly 600 people have been killed, while 468 were missing after days of torrential rain and a rare tropical storm battered Indonesia’s Sumatra island.
The rains have moved on, and the floodwaters have largely receded, but the disaster has left a trail of devastation and trauma for those who survived.
Rosmina, who like many Indonesians uses a single name, described fleeing her home in terror when the floodwaters arrived last week.
“Someone ran from the garden,” she told AFP outside her home in Tapanuli.
“‘Come on, run, run, the big water’s coming!’ he said. So I immediately ran to save my child,” she said.
“The water … was already up to their knees.”
She fished mud-sodden clothes and a small wardrobe daubed in the same grey mud from her house, but quickly conceded defeat.
“My home, it is destroyed,” she said.
“I hope the government will help us.”
Source: CNA
