After the floods – Alfira O’Sullivan and Murtala

In late November last year, heavy rainfall brought by Cyclone Senyar saw massive floods and landslides hit large parts of West and North Sumatra and Aceh Province. The images captured on cell phones and quickly sent across the world showed horrifying scenes of villages swept away by raging rivers and mudslides; and astonishingly, tree logs coursing down hillsides, collecting everything in their wake. The cost of this disaster, six weeks later, is still being counted. The National Disaster Management Agency's official tally has around 1,200 people killed, with hundreds still missing and thousands more injured. Over 230,000 people remained displaced.

In the wake of the disaster, in a somewhat surprising shift in tone, government officials joined scientists and environmental experts in acknowledging that changes to these landscapes caused by large-scale deforestation and forest conversion were contributing factors to the disaster and must be addressed. Whilst this was welcomed, concrete policy is still to come, and aid has been slow to reach those in need with victims calling for more and faster assistance.

Over a month later, what is the situation in these affected areas? Just how huge is the scale of this disaster? And how are the people of Aceh coping with yet another massive natural disaster?

In this week's episode Jemma chats with Alfira O’Sullivan and Murtala, directors of Suara Indonesia Dance. Mur, originally from Banda Aceh, worked as a volunteer assisting in the wake of the 2002 tsunami. Together with friends and colleagues in Aceh, they are coordinating relief efforts in flood-stricken Aceh.

In 2026, the Talking Indonesia podcast is co-hosted by Dr Jemma Purdey from the Australia-Indonesia Centre, Dr Jacqui Baker from Murdoch University, Dr Elisabeth Kramer from the University of New South Wales, Tito Ambyo from RMIT and Dr Clara Siagian from University College London.