Overview
- Fresh rains kept landslide alerts active and sustained airlifts to cut-off communities in Sri Lanka’s central highlands as the island’s confirmed death toll reached 618, with 209 people still unaccounted for and more than two million affected.
- Sri Lanka announced up to 10 million rupees per family to buy safer land and rebuild homes, plus one million rupees per fatality or permanent disability, while reconstruction needs are estimated at $6–7 billion and an extra $200 million from the IMF is under consideration on top of a scheduled $347 million tranche.
- In Indonesia’s Sumatra, the official death toll stands near 900 with hundreds missing and more than 800,000 people displaced in Aceh, where officials warn starvation now threatens isolated villages despite ongoing helicopter supply drops.
- Jakarta has not declared a national disaster, a step local leaders say would unlock resources, as years of cuts to the disaster agency’s budget have strained equipment and logistics and the government maintains it is not seeking international assistance.
- Indonesia moved against land-use practices blamed for worsening floods, revoking 20 logging licences covering about 750,000 hectares and halting upstream palm oil, mining and power operations, while UN agencies link the extreme rainfall to a warmer climate intensified by La Niña and a negative Indian Ocean Dipole.