Jakarta – People living in refugee tents, with nothing more than the clothes on their back after disaster struck their families and homes, was something Muhammad Amin thought he would only ever see on TV.

"I never imagined such a disaster would ever happen to me, but it did," he told The Jakarta Post on Thursday. When the Post met him, he was sitting alone in front of the remains of his house, occasionally puffing on a clove cigarette, his eyes vacant.

Amin's house and two others, which belonged to his relatives, in Kampung Gandaria in Radio Dalam, South Jakarta, were destroyed Wednesday afternoon by a flash flood during a heavy downpour in the area.

Amin, 45, is a native Betawi and has lived in the kampung all his life. "The house and the land were all my family had. It's like everything has been taken from us," he said.

For Amin, as for many other Jakarta residents, environmental degradation and population explosion have left no safe place in the city, not even in their own homes.

Amin and other residents started to see the first rainwater floods in the kampung in the late 1980s, but they did not worry because the water was only ankle-high. But every year it got worse. In early 2000s the floodwater was knee-high and Wednesday it was chest-high.

The trouble in the area started when the basin structure of the kampung caused local Jelawe River to overflow during heavy rain, flooding the area and creating a pool of water on an empty block next to the neighborhood. Between the vacant land and the houses was a long wall that usually held back the rainwater. On Wednesday, the wall gave way.

As the water from the heavy and prolonged rain built up, the brick wall in front of Amin's house could not withstand the pressure. When it broke, the water rushed through the neighborhood, destroying three houses and damaging many others.

Amin said the wall was built by the BRI Bank to protect the land, which was the subject of a legal ownership dispute. "Representatives from the bank came today, but they didn't promise any compensation. Some people from the subdistrict office also came and took pictures, but didn't say anything about it either," he said.

Amin said despite the frequent flooding, the neighborhood had never received any serious attention from the government. "Once government officers came in the mid-1990s, dredging the river a bit. In the following days, a newspaper reported the city government had 'successfully cleaned Kampung Gandaria', a big lie," said the father of two.

According to Amin, there were not many people in the area until the mid-1980s, and there were more trees and rice fields. Heavy rain never resulted in floods, as Jelawe River was not yet clogged with garbage and the breadth of open space eased the water absorption.

But more and more people had arrived during the past two decades, transforming the quiet kampung into a crowded neighborhood.

"Now when it rains heavily, the river overflows and floods the neighborhood to a meter deep," Amin said. The only breadwinner in his family, Amin works as a security guard in Cibubur for less than Rp 1 million (US$110) a month.

Amin is yet to decide what to do for his family or where to take them after the disaster. He is temporarily staying at his neighbor's house while his family is staying with a relative of his wife. "I was born and raised here, and so were my parents and my children. I don't know where else to go," he said. (dre)