The waters began to withdraw from the renowned island as a tourist destination, after the worst floods of the last decade have left 16 dead
Locals about the damage that the floods caused in Denpasar, the capital of Bali, photo: Keyza Widiatmika-Nurphoto / Shutterstock Editorial / Profimedia
Local authorities said on Friday that two people were still missing on the Bali tourist island in Indonesia, while the waters were beginning to withdraw after the floods that killed at least 16 people this week, most of them taken by the rivers when the rivers came out of the mattress, reports Reuters.
The torrential rains on Tuesday and Wednesday caused quick floods in Denpasar, the capital of the island, and in six of the eight regions of Bali, blocking the main roads and access to the International Airport of the island. In some areas there were also landslides.
“The people here were shocked. The floods were so serious,” said Tasha, a resident of Bali, for BBC News Indonesia. “I thought Bali had an adequate drainage system,” she said for the BBC, who notes that the inductions of the previous days were the most serious that have affected Bali in the last decade.
Nyoman Gede Maha Putra, an expert in architecture and planning at Warmadewa University in Denpasar, told Reuters that the accelerated development of the island did not take into account the need for appropriate drainage infrastructure.
“Urban planning does not consider disasters,” he added, stressing that “all the infrastructure construction is oriented to make Bali more attractive for tourists and investors.”
I Wayan Koster, the governor of the island of Bali, was quoted by the local press as saying that changing the use of land was not the cause of this week's floods.
The body planning body for the regional development for the Bali government did not respond immediately to a comment request from Reuters.
Over 6 million foreign tourists in Bali last year
Tourism is the main source of income of Bali Island, and last year over 6.3 million arrivals of international tourists were registered on the island, the data of the National Statistics Office shows.
Last year's international arrivals have exceeded the level of 2019, the year before the Covid-19 Pandemia to block tourism. Both Indonesia and the neighboring Thailand have then tried solutions to attract tourists as their economies are strongly dependent on this sector.
Both countries, some of the most popular destinations in Asia, are now enjoying a “tourist boom”, like other parts of the world, including Europe.
For Indonesia, the international arrivals of tourists represented 40% of the total number of tourists who visited the country last year.
The searches of the two missing persons were still in progress on Friday, said I Nyoman Sidakarya, the head of the search and rescue service in Bali.
