Indonesia Bid to Control Rain to Avert More Floods

Indonesian authorities will use generators and cloud-seeding measures to defuse and push away rain-laden clouds to avoid more flooding that has paralyzed Jakarta, an official said Friday.

Heavy rain over the mega-city last week caused 32 deaths and at its peak forced nearly 46,000 people to flee their inundated homes, Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, spokesman for the National Disaster Mitigation Agency, told Agence France Presse.

The weather agency has forecast heavy rain for January 26-28, raising concerns that Jakarta -- which combined with its satellite cities is home to 20 million people -- may get submerged again.

To avoid such flooding a team led by the artificial rain unit of the Agency for the Assessment and Application of Technology will Saturday start deploying 20 ground-based acetone generators in western Jakarta, in a bid to avert condensation in the region that contributes to larger rain clouds.

The artificial rain unit will also deploy a Hercules plane to carry out cloud seeding measures to force approaching clouds to rain in the ocean before they arrive over the capital, unit head Tri Handoko Seto said.

"We are trying our best to modify the rain to not fall heavily on Jakarta as well as forcing the rainclouds to rain in the sea, or in areas outside Jakarta that can still take heavy rains," Seto told AFP by telephone.

The rainy season is expected to last until March, Nugroho said.