December 04, 2025
RED FM News Desk
Deaths from last week’s catastrophic floods and landslides across parts of Asia climbed past 1,500 on Thursday, as rescue teams struggled to reach isolated communities and hundreds of people remained missing.
The scale of the devastation has intensified criticism that decades of unchecked development, mining, and widespread deforestation worsened the disaster. Survivors and activists are urging governments to strengthen forest protection.
“We need the government to investigate and fix forest management,” said Rangga Adiputra, a 31-year-old teacher from West Sumatra whose home was destroyed.
He said illegal logging had stripped the hills above his village, leaving the area dangerously exposed. “We don’t want this costly disaster to happen again.”
Officials confirmed 837 deaths in Indonesia, 479 in Sri Lanka, and 185 in Thailand, along with three in Malaysia. At least 861 people remain unaccounted for in Indonesia and Sri Lanka, where entire villages are buried under mud and debris.
Access to many communities has been cut off by washed-out roads, collapsed bridges, and damaged telecommunications, leaving thousands without food and clean water.
Images from Indonesian television showed massive piles of felled timber surging down rivers in North Sumatra, West Sumatra, and Aceh. Environmental groups say this is evidence that deforestation played a significant role in the scale of the disaster.
WALHI, Indonesia’s largest environmental organization, said decades of clearing land for mining, palm oil plantations, and illegal logging have destroyed natural barriers that once absorbed rainfall and stabilized the soil.
“The disaster wasn’t just nature’s fury; it was intensified by decades of deforestation,” said WALHI activist Rianda Purba. The group says Indonesia lost more than 240,000 hectares of primary forest in 2024 alone, leaving smaller river basins extremely vulnerable.
Global Forest Watch reported that Aceh, North Sumatra, and West Sumatra have lost 19,600 square kilometers of forest since 2000 — an area bigger than New Jersey.
In some areas, emergency crews were stunned to find stacks of neatly cut logs mixed in with flood debris. Local residents also reported that much of the wood appeared to have been deliberately harvested, not torn from the ground during the storm.
President Prabowo Subianto, after visiting affected areas on Monday, promised reforms. “We must truly prevent deforestation and forest destruction. Protecting our forests is crucial,” he said.
Environment Minister Hanif Faisol Nurofiq said investigators are examining the role of eight companies suspected of contributing to the disaster. He said environmental permits will be reviewed, and future project assessments will need to consider extreme rainfall scenarios.
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