Indonesia and Sri Lanka Struggle After Cyclones

TaiwanPlus News

Indonesia and Sri Lanka are struggling to recover a week after cyclones tore through both countries.

Transcript

00:00The floodwaters are still high more than a week after Cyclone Senyar hit Indonesia.

00:08More than 700 are dead, and the survivors are suffering.

00:15Rice farmer Edo Sitampul sheds a tear at the destruction, including heavy damage to his

00:20home and devastated crops.

00:23He says he just wants everything to go back to normal, but acknowledges that won't be

00:27easy.

00:32His wife says they've done little but cry and attempt to clean up.

00:36What the future holds is anyone's guess.

00:41We have a lot of debt, but we borrowed from other people too.

00:44A lot of that debt was for the children, for small things like trying to plant rice on a

00:49little plot.

00:50But now there's nothing left to rely on.

00:53Everything is destroyed.

00:55So we don't even know anymore what we're going to eat in the days ahead.

01:02Local officials say providing relief is their priority, but at least in some places, getting

01:06essentials is proving hard.

01:09We have no blankets here, no towels, no diapers, no baby milk.

01:17It's a similar story in Sri Lanka, another island nation hit by a violent storm last week.

01:25The death toll from Cyclone Ditwa is nearing 500.

01:32These people in the landslide hit town of Mawatura are digging through rubble by hand, searching

01:37for those who didn't make it out in time.

01:39We got together later and looked.

01:45Part of the village had disappeared.

01:46There was nothing left.

01:48Then we left at the temple for the night.

01:50We came back early in the morning.

01:52We saved a couple, but the child was dead.

01:55We took the two to the hospital and then came back to find buried bodies.

01:58That's what we were still working tirelessly for.

02:05And like in Indonesia, there's financial ruin.

02:09The owner of this electronics repair shop in the town of Gampola thought moving his goods

02:13upstairs would save them from the flood.

02:16He was wrong, and he estimates losses of more than 22,000 U.S. dollars.

02:20There were about 20 television sets and they were brand new LED TV sets.

02:27There were a lot of electronic goods that we had just repaired.

02:34Scientists warn a warming earth could bring more intense storms like this to places like

02:38Sri Lanka.

02:39What we know is that the cyclones that we have, that are about in the same number, they become

02:45more intense.

02:46So they produce more rain and so they are more impactful.

02:50So the same amount of cyclones produce impacts that are larger because they are all becoming

02:57more intense.

02:58Which could mean the storms that hit Asia in the future could pack a serious bunch, leaving

03:03many more cleanups for residents like these.

03:07Dolphine Chen and John Van Trieste for Taiwan Plus.

03:09Dolphine Chen and John Van Trieste for Taiwan Plus.

03:10Dolphine Chen and John Van Trieste for Taiwan Plus.

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