North Sumatra floods and landslides kill 31 as rescue teams race to clear roads

# North Sumatra floods and landslides kill 31 as rescue teams race to clear roads

*Event date: 2024-11-29*

At least 31 people were killed after a week of torrential rain triggered flash floods and landslides across Indonesia's North Sumatra province, where rescue teams were still searching for missing people and trying to reopen blocked roads.

The DW report says the disaster spread across four districts and hit places from Medan to rural areas such as Sibolangit and Sayur Matinggi. In several communities, landslides buried roads under debris and cut off access, making rescue work slower and more dangerous.

Authorities said emergency teams were working under treacherous conditions to clear routes and reach residents. Temporary shelters were becoming overcrowded as displaced people arrived from flooded and landslide-hit areas. The head of North Sumatra's disaster management agency said the province had asked its governor to declare a disaster emergency, which would speed aid distribution and allow the mobilisation of national resources.

One of the most difficult rescue efforts was on the road from Medan to Berastagi, where police and rescue officials searched for survivors trapped in three cars and a tourist bus at the bottom of a cliff after a landslide on Wednesday. DW reported that the death toll from that incident had risen from seven to nine as more bodies were recovered from the bus, which had been buried under trees, mud and rocks.

The excerpt also said more than 10 people were injured in that landslide. It did not specify the number still missing at the end of the report, but it made clear that not all victims had been found. That uncertainty is typical in a disaster where the terrain itself becomes the obstacle.

The broader pattern is familiar in Indonesia, a country of thousands of islands and many mountainous or flood-prone communities. Seasonal rains can trigger landslides and flash floods, especially when ground saturation rises and slope stability collapses. The country's weather agency has already warned of extreme weather toward the end of the year as La Nina accelerates rainfall.

For North Sumatra, the immediate crisis is rescue and access. Roads need to be cleared, shelters supplied and the dead identified. But the longer problem is reconstruction in communities where the same hillsides and river valleys that sustain daily life can turn deadly after days of rain.

The death toll will likely continue to be refined as responders reach isolated settlements. What is already clear is that this was not a single localised slide, but a province-wide disaster that stretched emergency services and left dozens of families facing loss, displacement and uncertainty.

The rain has stopped being just weather; in North Sumatra, it became a mass casualty event.