VP VISITS SITU GINTUNG DAM BURST SITE

Jakarta, March 27 (ANTARA) - Vice President M Jusuf Kalla visited the location of the Situ Gintung dam burst at Cirendeu, Ciputat, Tangerang, southeast of Jakarta, on Friday.

Kalla also visited a refugee camp set up at the University of Muhammadiyah complex, also in Ciputat, to accommodate victims of the disaster. He also spoke with a number of refugees.
The vice president was accompanied by Coordinating Minister for the People's Welfare Aburizal Bakrie and Public Works Minister Djoko Kirmanto.
According to data collected from several emergency command posts in the disaster area, at least 35 people were killed and some others missing in the disaster.
The dam burst was located exactly behind Situ Gintung Restaurant and had obliterated a 250-meter-long section of the dam a large dam broke down. It occurred at around 2 am Friday following several hours of heavy rains on Thursday night.
The water from the lake inundated hundreds of houses.
Among the victims were students of the University of Muhammadiyah Jakarta (UMJ) who lived near the campus area.
Search and rescue officers were trying to rescue residents being trapped in their submerged houses. The survivors were evacuated to higher grounds near the UMJ campus.
The floodwaters still reached a height of one to two meters late Friday morning.
Some survivors said that the disaster reminded them of a deadly tsunami which devastated Aceh Province and Nias Island on December 26, 2004.
They said that they had heard loud noises as if it were a powerful earthquake. They later found out that the noises came from floodwaters coming from the burst Dam.