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Image: Bali roads flood. Credit: Murdani Usman

The Denpasar City Public Works Department is continuing to repair the streets and sidewalks of the city and surrounding areas after unprecedented downpours and flooding in south Bali in the past days and nights.

Maintenance crews have been working around the clock to fix the streets and the damaged pavements in several points, like Jalan Nangka Utara, Jalan Waribang and more areas.

Relating to the heavy rains and flooding lately, a public works unit is assigned to perform routine maintenance, which is to clean sewers and rivers to anticipate floods before they occur. This was confirmed by Denpasar Regional Secretary, AAN Rai Iswara, when inspecting flooding near SMPN 6 (Junior High School 6), Denpasar on Tuesday. He said that the drains in the area are regularly cleaned of accumulated rubbish.

“In 2010, there were 32 flood points. After we created many cuts and maintained the drains, there are now only 11 flood points,” he said.

Denpasar is greatly impacted by heavy rains because of its downstream location. However, the Denpasar City Council has always handled these situations by pumping the flood waters back to the river and assign a medical team to ensure public health.

I Gusti Putra Sanjaya from Water Resource (SDA) said that the public works teams has been working well, since Monday when they handled falling trees that were blocking the river flow.

“They also concentrated on the trash piled up at several river bottlenecks. The team work is already good,” he said to nusabali.com. “The team will always be there if there is an emergency situation, the public complaints are reviewed so quick solutions can be found. We also hope that the public do not litter and keep the environment clean,” he said.

Meanwhile, with the heavy rain and flooding in Kuta, PLN shut down 80 electrical transformers and substations, yesterday because they were starting to be flooded too.

“When we heard the news, our officers went to the locations directly to secure the network, because we prioritize public safety,” said Communications Manager at Bali PLN, I Gusti Ketut Putra on Tuesday evening.

At the moment, 73 of them are already function normally. “After the water is gone, the last seven will be normalized, too,” he said to tribunnews.com. The location of the electrical boxes are on Jalan Campuhan, Jalan Dewi Sri, Jalan Pararaton, Jalan Kunti II, Jalan Beji Ayu, Jalan Sri Kresna, and Gang Baik-Baik. “We also advice that the public turn off their electronic devices when there was a flood and ensure that the devices are already dry when they want to use them again,” he said.