Medan, Indonesia \u2013<\/strong> As floodwaters burst into Nurdin and his wife\u2019s home in Indonesia\u2019s Aceh Province last week, the elderly couple crawled onto their bed.<\/p>\n Nurdin, who uses a wheelchair following a stroke, resigned himself to his fate.<\/p>\n list of 4 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n \u201cI was just waiting to die. I didn\u2019t want to leave my home,\u201d Nurdin, who lives in the city of Langsa, told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n \u201cI decided I would just die there, but my wife insisted we leave.\u201d<\/p>\n As the water continued to rise, Nurdin\u2019s younger brother called on the couple\u2019s\u00a0neighbours for help.<\/p>\n By the time Nurdin\u2019s neighbours arrived at about 4am on Wednesday to carry the pair to safety, the water was chest-deep.<\/p>\n \u201cAs I was being carried, we got hit by a strong water current, which knocked my neighbour off his feet, and we both plunged into the flood,\u201d said Nurdin, 71, who, like many Indonesians, uses a single name.<\/p>\n \u201cI started to drown as I couldn\u2019t stand up, and I thought \u2018This is it\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n Nurdin and his wife reached their neighbours\u2019 home unhurt, but torrential rains soon made the building uninhabitable, forcing them to seek the assistance of the army, which evacuated the pair to a local mosque using a table as a makeshift stretcher.<\/p>\n \u201cThere were no clothes there, so I just had to wear a sarung,\u201d Nurdin said.\u00a0\u201cI was there for four days.\u201d<\/p>\n At the mosque, Nurdin said that another Langsa resident told him that he lived next to a cemetery and had seen bodies rising out of the ground and floating away in the deluge.<\/p>\n Nurdin, who has been staying at his brother\u2019s house since the floodwaters receded, has yet to return to his home, but his sibling told him that almost everything was gone when he visited the scene.<\/p>\n \u201cMaybe about 1 percent of my belongings can be saved. Everything in the kitchen is gone, and my fridge was destroyed,\u201d Nurdin said.<\/p>\n \u201cMy wardrobes had the doors ripped off them, and all the clothes were covered in water and mud. The mud in front of my home is still about half a metre high.\u201d<\/p>\n Floods in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Malaysia have killed more than 1,140 people over the past week, following extreme weather brought on by three tropical cyclones.<\/p>\n At least 631 people have been killed in Indonesia alone.<\/p>\n With many areas across the island of Sumatra still inaccessible, the death toll is expected to rise.<\/p>\n Many parts of the island have been buried in landslides, following flash floods which have made roads impassable and impeded search and rescue efforts.<\/p>\n Nurkasyah, a 70-year-old resident of\u00a0Kuta Makmur,\u00a0northern Aceh Province, is among the many who have lost almost all their possessions.<\/p>\n \u201cMy washing machine, my fridge, rice cooker, and all my rice was destroyed,\u201d Nurkasyah told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n \u201cEverything is still in my house; it didn\u2019t float away, but it was submerged in water, so I can\u2019t use it any more. I might be able to save my bed if I put it outside and let it dry in the sun for a few days.\u201d<\/p>\n Nurkasyah said that the waters started to rise on Tuesday but subsided slightly before rising again on Wednesday following torrential rain overnight, until water was \u201ccoming in through the windows\u201d.<\/p>\n Along with 300 others, Nurkasyah took shelter in a local community centre for the next five days, eating only the few basic necessities that panicked residents had been able to grab as they raced to escape the rising waters.<\/p>\n \u201cWe just ate rice, instant noodles and some eggs. There wasn\u2019t enough food to go around,\u201d she said. \u201cI have been to see my home, but it is full of mud now, so I can\u2019t live there.\u201d<\/p>\n At the same time as Nurkasyah was watching the floodwaters rise around her home, her son, Nasir, was taking a bus from Banda Aceh, the provincial capital of Aceh, to Medan, the provincial capital of neighbouring North Sumatra.<\/p>\n The journey by road usually takes about 12 hours, but Nasir found himself marooned on the bus for the next five days.<\/p>\n \u201cAfter we left on Tuesday, the floodwaters were starting to rise, but we could still get through,\u201d he told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n \u201cUnfortunately, when we got to Kuala Simpang on Wednesday afternoon, the driver said he couldn\u2019t go any further or go back,\u201d he said, referring to a town on the\u00a0border of Aceh and North Sumatra provinces.<\/p>\n As the town began to be submerged in the rising floodwaters, Nasir and the other passengers climbed onto the roof of the bus to keep safe and survey the scene.<\/p>\n \u201cOn Sunday morning, a group of us decided to take the initiative and try to find an alternative route out of there,\u201d Nasir said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe agreed among ourselves that there was no way we could go back to Aceh, and we would have to press on to Medan. We managed to find a boat owned by a fisherman, who took us part of the way, and then a pick-up truck took us the rest of the way.\u201d<\/p>\n With many roads unpassable due to mud, fallen trees and other debris, Nasi now faces the prospect of an arduous trek home.<\/p>\n \u201cNow, I am going to try and fly back to Aceh by plane, rather than attempt the journey by road again,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Medan, Indonesia \u2013 As floodwaters burst into Nurdin and his wife\u2019s home in Indonesia\u2019s Aceh Province last week, the elderly couple crawled onto their bed. Nurdin, who uses a wheelchair following a stroke, resigned himself to his fate. Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of list \u201cI was just waiting to die. I didn\u2019t want […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4002,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4001","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asia-pacific"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4001","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4001"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4001\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
![\"flood\"](\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/AP25335424654645-1764646246.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C513&quality=80\")
![\"air\"](\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/croppepic-1764647498.jpg?resize=770%2C770&quality=80\")
![\"nasir\"](\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/1000487505-1764646341.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C577&quality=80\")
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