Floods in North Sumatra turn piles of timber into battering rams

Ensuing floods wiped out four villages. Farther south, the deluge brought an unexpected danger: log after log of timber.

- Hasya Nindita, Rin Hindryati and Sui-Lee Wee

Untold numbers of logs and other debris crashed into residential areas in North Sumatra province after Cyclone Senyar made landfall in Indonesia on Nov 26.

“Everywhere you look — left and right along the road - there are piles of timber,” said Ms Sarma Hutajulu, a volunteer rescue worker who was helping to clear debris in Tukka district.

“Those are what smashed into people’s homes.”

The storm battered northwest Indonesia, before moving on to Malaysia and Thailand, unleashing days of heavy rain that triggered flash floods and landslides that have killed hundreds.

The vast majority of casualties were in Indonesia, where hundreds are still missing. Hundreds of thousands of others have been displaced.

Experts said the catastrophic nature of the storm was compounded by decades of deforestation. Large sections of Sumatra’s natural forest have been razed in recent decades and converted into oil palm plantations, pulpwood farms and gold mines. Logs from some of those operations became floating battering rams after the storm hit.

“I saw it myself in the field; there were so many logs being carried away,” Mr Walden Sitanggang, a pastor and an environmental activist, said from North Sumatra.

“Logs don’t just fall from the sky — they must have come from logging activities upstream.”