Sinking towards disaster

Year after year, centimetre by centimetre, Rudi Suwandi’s home in north-west Jakarta is being swallowed.

The trees and park where kids would play have vanished, houses with their own backyards - gone, entire rooms of Rudi’s house have been consumed. Even the village cemetery where his ancestors and thousands of others are buried has disappeared.

In its place lies stagnant, murky water.

Rudi first remembers the water appearing in the mid-90s, when the village started flooding every rainy season. Every year, it would get higher and take longer to drain away.

In 1995 it was 20 centimetres deep and took three to four months to dry out. By the early 2000s his village, Kapuk Teko, was permanently flooded. 

Now, entire areas are submerged two metres underwater. All the houses are perched on stilts above the lake, connected by gangplanks and concrete paths. The only way into Rudi’s village is via a low, narrow concrete bridge.

Read the story from ABC News by Mark Doman, Indonesia correspondent David Lipson and Ari Wu - “Sinking towards disaster.”