Indonesia readies hospital ships for cyclone survivors

Indonesia's navy readied hospital ships Wednesday to help treat injured survivors of a cyclone that has killed about 160 in the archipelago and neighbouring East Timor, as fears grow over coronavirus outbreaks in cramped evacuation shelters.

Helicopters were also dropping food and other essentials into remote villages, while sniffer dogs were deployed to search for the dozens still missing after weekend floods and landslides devastated the Southeast Asian nations.

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Torrential rains from Tropical Cyclone Seroja, one of the most destructive storms to hit the region in years, turned small communities into wastelands of mud and uprooted trees, sending thousands fleeing to shelters.

The storm swept buildings in some villages down a mountainside and to the shore of the ocean on Indonesia's Lembata island.

Dozens were killed on Adonara island, where Sugeng lost his 20-year-old daughter when a wall of water tore into his family's home. Her body was later found on a beach.

A collapsed retaining wall sits along the banks of a flooded river in Dili, East Timor, on Tuesday. AP

"She was trying to hold on to a cupboard but the current was so strong that she lost her grip," said the 60-year-old, who like many Indonesians goes by one name.

"I'm devastated."

'Everything is gone'

The hospital ships were due to leave for the storm-hit region from Jakarta and Semarang, a city east of Indonesia's capital, said Raditya Jati, spokesman for the disaster agency.

The agency also said sniffer dogs would hunt through mountains of debris and rubble for the bodies of more than 70 still-missing victims -- and any survivors.

"It was very scary because we've only seen that kind of scene on TV before, but now we experienced it," mother-of-two Maria Herlina Tula said of the flooding.

"Our home is flooded and everything in it is gone."

An aerial view shows damaged houses following flash floods triggered by a tropical cyclone in Indonesia. Reuters

More than 120 people have been listed as dead in a remote cluster of islands at the eastern end of the Indonesian archipelago.

Some three dozen people were killed in East Timor — a tiny half-island nation of 1.3 million sandwiched between Indonesia and Australia that is officially known as Timor-Leste.

Timor authorities have not said how many people are missing.

Its capital Dili was inundated, with the front of its presidential palace transformed into a mud pit.