Name: Death toll rises after floods across South East Asia | BBC News
Uploaded: 2025-12-02T16:52:49.000Z
Duration: 10 min 35 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Across four countries in Southeast Asia, authorities are working against the clock to deliver much needed supplies to more than 1 million people who have been forced from their homes by devastating flooding.

Dramatic footage continues to emerge, including this town in Indonesia's Aceh province being submerged by floodwaters.

Locals watching helplessly on the water there, so powerful, managed to carry off a house.

The deluge was partly fueled by a rare tropical cyclone which dumped rainfall on Sri Lanka and parts of Indonesia's Sumatra, southern Thailand and northern Malaysia as well.

The death toll in Indonesia is continuing to climb.

Rescue services say more than 700 people have been killed so far and it's feared hundreds more are buried in the mud.

Across the Indian Ocean and Sri Lanka, more than 400 people have died.

Military led teams are scouring the impacted areas searching for those who remain stranded.

The army managed to rescue these people, 70 or so passengers who were trapped and a bus.

Satellite images taken before and after the flood waters swept through.

One person in Indonesia telling the BBC the floodwaters were like a tsunami, bringing back terrible memories for many people across the region as well.

Well, joining me from Colombo in Sri Lanka is Shara Dhanasakar, the editor of BBC News Sinhala and from Jakarta, Astradastra and Adrian Grasti from BBC News Indonesia.

If I could start with you, Ashara, what is the picture in Sri Lanka today?

As you clearly said now, the death toll has risen now from yesterday's 300 figures to 410 while the missing keep rising for 336 and 1.4 million people affected overall with the flood and the landslide that has occurred during the last few days.

So the rescue operation is still going with Navy, Sri Lanka army and the Air force with the help of all this with also from the local help and also India has and Pakistan has generously offered their help for the rescue operations.

While some of the infrastructure has been restored majorly for the damaged areas widely damaged.

The largest damage which caused in Kandy and Badullah has been restored.

And we are hearing certain areas now they have at least open some of the infrastructure, especially the access roads and some of the essential service has been restored back, especially electricity and the mobile connections and essential items for these people, however, like the death trolleys keep rising.

And today we are getting some of the footage from isolated villages we never heard earlier that has been affected and like, you know, the half of the village people have been like, you know, unfortunately been affected by these Floods, especially the landslide situation.

So the situation, the numbers are going to rise, but

right now the cyclone has been moved from the country, so we expect no rain in the coming days.

Yeah, it's a devastating picture across Sri Lanka and Astrodestre.

What about in Indonesia, particularly in Aceh, I guess at the moment where there are still areas, I understand, that are cut off.

When we woke up this morning here in Indonesia, the number of death casualties was at 600 and more.

But now at 7pm Indonesia's time, we have 744 people died, 500 more remains missing, and

more than 3.3 million of people are affected by these floods and landslides.

In Aceh, particularly, a lot of the places have not been able to receive aids.

The Indonesian government, the president yesterday, he visited some of these places and promised that help is on the way.

And the rescue team are still trying as best they can to clear up the road.

It is mentioned that in aceh, more than 50 km of road has been blocked by massive amounts of mud.

So you can imagine how difficult it is to reach these isolated areas.

And AIDS have to be delivered to that places manually, either by foot or by motorcycles.

So we're hearing a lot of stories from people in this area, from Aceh and Tapanuli, particularly, that they haven't received any aids.

After almost a week of being isolated from the outside world, they are claiming that food now is very scarce.

There's no clean water, there's no clothing, and

people have to loot stores and warehouses in order to find food in their desperations.

Ashara, Sri Lanka's president has called this the most challenging natural disaster in the country's history.

Given what the island has been through in the past, that is quite a statement.

Where is the biggest challenge, do you think, right now?

I mean, is there access to things like clean water everywhere?

So, right, as you said, like, you know, it is, it is one of the biggest devastation we have faced after the tsunami, if I'm not wrong.

So as I said, it'll be very quite challenging for us because we are in a very tight schedule with IMF at the moment to meet our economic, like, goals with them.

And on December, we are supposed to have the next like, you know, scheduled with the IMF and after the 22, 2022 protest, which the country was devastated by economic crisis and we were just about to rise as a country with like, you know, meeting the financial targets, whatever, so.

But the latest UN report that has been out yesterday evening, says that the government response has been very swift and they have allocated 30 billion do rupees for the immediate relief to avoid the possible delays and for the assistance to be provided.

And they are particularly happy about the, like, you know, the devastated, like, you know, the AIDS program that has been initiated.

And apart from that, what is challenging for us is that all the infrastructure and the more major devastation is.

Yeah, like major devastation has occurred in these tourist areas which we were about to move.

So December to April is the season for Sri Lankans, like the tourist season.

And this is hugely going to impact the economy because we are supposed to bring lot of money into the country that will be.

So that has been provided immediately and there has been lot of relief contrary to Indonesia, I guess.

And there's a lot of, you know, support given from the community itself apart from the government.

So there are challenges that has been met.

Ashara and Astidestra, thank you very much for updating us on what is happening.

But let's bring you a little bit more now with Dedak Ananda who is currently in West Sumatra.

That is one of the regions we've just been talking about worst affected by the flooding.

Good to have you with us at a really terrible time for Sumatra.

We've just been hearing about clean water and how there is quite a bit of it available in Sri Lanka.

It's not a big issue, but how is it where you are?

Just wondering what the situation is where you are in terms of access to clean water across West Sumatra.

Yeah, in my area in Padang, West Matra has been heavily affected by the flash floods and landslides.

Many homes and small businesses were flooded or they met.

It also damaged the clean water facilities and it cut the supply of the clean water in my city.

Were you given enough warning by the government?

Talking about warning, There were weather warnings in the region, but

the intensity of the suddenness of the rains is very, very, very strong rains and combined with the local factor like land degradation, deforestation and it's become more worse than usual.

It meant many communities had a little time to fully prepare to the thing that will happen.

Have you seen floods like this before because you are used to heavy rain and the monsoon season?

They are getting worse every year even though the meteorological agency have warning issues every month, every rain season.

But it's getting worse every year because the forest is getting deforestation.

But however, the survivors and experts report that the flood and landslide develop quickly in some place combined with the government and police.

Deda, thank you very much for joining us.

And thank you for sharing what is going on in West Sumatra.

As he was mentioning, real anger growing about deforestation, the effect this might have had.

And of course, climate change also expected.

And when we look at the situation more closely, to have played its part in these devastating floods.