Indonesia's capital is putting the finishing touches on coastal defences to hold back peak tides this week that experts fear could inundate much of the city, an official said Monday.
Authorities in the capital have put up barriers and repaired pumps along the city's north coast to fend off expected high tides on Tuesday and Wednesday nights, Jakarta public works agency technical head Fakhrurrazi said.
"We've had 30 people in the field working on this… the local people have also been helping," he said.
The World Bank has warned that flood-prone Jakarta, which is actually sinking under its own weight, will be inundated this week from a combination of 18-year peaks in sea levels and a storm surge.
However the Bank's lead infrastructure specialist, Hongjoo Hahm, said the danger may have passed after weather forecasts showed a lower-than-expected storm-surge.
He added the city's reinforced defences should be able to withstand the tides.
"The level of accuracy of the wave predictions is precise and absolute. The wave predictions are never wrong. The problem is the storm surge, the storm surge is due to weather factors," Hahm said.
Jakarta, which is expected to sink between 40 to 60 centimetres (16-24 inches) by 2025 under the weight of overdevelopment, has been hit by a series of sea floods in recent months.
The road to Jakarta's Soekarno-Hatta International Airport was inundated by more than a metre (three feet) of seawater last month, and floods in November and December inundated slums with more than two metres of seawater.
The World Bank predicts that unless Jakarta overhauls its tidal walls, sea floods at the next peak of the tidal cycle in 2025 could reach the presidential palace five kilometres (3.1 miles) inland.
