November 28, 2025 | 09:52 pm
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The Head of the National Disaster Management Agency (BNPB), Lieutenant General TNI Suharyanto, revealed the reasons why the government has yet to declare national disaster status for the floods and landslides in Sumatra.
According to Suharyanto, the disasters that have struck Aceh, North Sumatra, and West Sumatra still fall under the category of provincial-level regional disasters.
He explained that the disasters in these three regions seemed terrifying when information spread on social media. However, he claimed that the situation has improved.
"The national disaster status ever declared in Indonesia was the Covid-19 and the 2004 Aceh Tsunami," said Suharyanto in a press conference broadcast on BNPB's official YouTube channel on Friday, November 28, 2025.
Meanwhile, he went on, several disasters such as the Palu Earthquake, the earthquake in West Nusa Tenggara (NTB), and the earthquake in Cianjur were not declared as national disasters.
Suharyanto said that the national disaster status is determined through various considerations, one of which is the scale of the casualties. Regarding the current disaster situation in Sumatra, he stated that it has not reached the threshold for declaring a national disaster status.
Nevertheless, Suharyanto acknowledged that the information circulating on social media created a sense of crisis and tension. He said that the tension arose when reports of isolated residents and disrupted communication networks surfaced. "Indeed, it looked frightening yesterday because it was being widely circulated on social media," said Suharyanto.
However, he assured that the situation in many areas has been improving once the rain has stopped. "Now the very serious situation is only in Central Tapanuli," he said.
Extreme weather has resulted in floods and landslides in several cities and regencies in North Sumatra, West Sumatra, and Aceh over the past few days. As of Friday afternoon, the BNPB recorded a total of 174 deaths and 12,546 households displaced due to this disaster.
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