December 29, 2025 | 06:42 pm
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - President Prabowo Subianto has sent his personal helicopter since the first week of the floods and landslides that struck Sumatra at the end of November. Cabinet Secretary Teddy Indra Wijaya stated that the Governor of Aceh, Muzakir Manaf (also known as Mualem), and his disaster management team used the helicopter in the region.
"Since the first week of the disaster, the president immediately sent his personal helicopter to Aceh for use by the Governor of Aceh, his team, and their families. Please use it to travel around Aceh since the first week," he said at Halim Perdanakusuma Air Force Base on Monday, December 29, 2025, as monitored by the Presidential Secretariat on YouTube.
Teddy claimed that the government has so far sent 53 combined helicopters owned by the Indonesian National Armed Forces (TNI), National Police (Polri), the National Search and Rescue Agency of Indonesia (Basarnas), National Disaster Management Agency (BNPB), and private parties to handle the disaster in Sumatra. The helicopters transported logistics to areas that are difficult to access by land. "They flew logistics to areas that are inaccessible by land, where roads are cut off, and where the roads are not connected to the villages," he said.
In a previous press conference, Teddy also emphasized that the government has been assisting with the handling of the Sumatra disaster since the end of November 2025. However, he claimed that the government's work was not recorded on camera or covered by the mass media.
"All TNI, Polri, and Basarnas personnel, as stated by the TNI Commander, the BNPB in the regions, all of them from the first second, the first day, without cameras," he said in a press conference on the Sumatra disaster response at Halim Perdanakusuma Air Force Base, East Jakarta, Friday, December 19, 2025.
He continued, all helicopters in Sumatra were also deployed on November 27, 2025. The helicopters carried assistance and moved to Padang, Medan, and Banda Aceh. "All helicopters and planes on Java were mobilized to Sumatra. It takes 13-15 hours for the helicopters to fly from Java to Sumatra," he said.
The flash floods and landslides that hit Aceh, North Sumatra, and West Sumatra at the end of November still claimed lives a month after the incident. The BNPB recorded an increase in the number of casualties in the Sumatra disaster.
Based on data as of Monday, December 29, 2025, at 06.00, the death toll reached 1,140. The number of fatalities increased by two from the previous day's tally.
The most fatalities were in Aceh Province, with 513 people dead. 213 of them were from North Aceh.
In North Sumatra, the death toll from the floods and landslides reached 365 people. Central Tapanuli was the most affected in terms of casualties, with 127 fatalities. Meanwhile, 262 people died in West Sumatra due to the disaster. Of those, 192 were from the Agam Regency.
Novali Panji Nugroho contributed to this article
Read: Sumatra Floods Death Toll Rises to 1,140 as Nearly 400,000 Residents Displaced
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