Torrential monsoon-season rains, combined with two separate tropical cyclones last week, unleashed heavy downpours across all of Sri Lanka and parts of Indonesia’s Sumatra, southern Thailand and northern Malaysia, News.Az reports, citing AFP.
Climate change is leading to more intense rainfall events because a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture, and warmer oceans have the potential to intensify storms.
While the floodwaters have largely receded, the destruction has left hundreds of thousands of people living in shelters and struggling to obtain clean water and food.
In Indonesia’s Aceh province, one of the hardest-hit areas, residents told AFP that survivors who had the means were stockpiling essential supplies.
"Road access is mostly cut off in flood-affected areas," 29-year-old Erna Mardhiah said as she joined a long queue at a petrol station in Banda Aceh.
"People are worried about running out of fuel," she added from the line she had been in for two hours.
The pressure has caused skyrocketing prices.
"Most things are already sky-high... chillies alone are up to 300,000 rupiah per kilo ($18), so that's probably why people are panic-buying," she said.
On Monday, Indonesia's government said it was sending 34,000 tons of rice and 6.8 million litres of cooking oil to the three worst-affected provinces, Aceh, North Sumatra and West Sumatra.
"There can be no delays," Agriculture Minister Andi Amran Sulaiman said.
Aid groups said they were working to ship supplies to affected areas, warning that local markets were running out of essential supplies and prices had tripled already.
"Communities across Aceh are at severe risk of food shortages and hunger if supply lines are not reestablished in the next seven days," charity group Islamic Relief said.
A shipment of 12 tonnes of food from the group aboard an Indonesian navy vessel was due to arrive in Aceh on Tuesday.
At least 631 people were killed in the floods across Sumatra, and 472 are still listed as missing. A million people have evacuated from their homes, according to the disaster agency.
Survivors have described terrifying waves of water that arrived without warning.
In East Aceh, Zamzami said the floodwaters had been "unstoppable, like a tsunami wave."
"We can't explain how big the water seemed, it was truly extraordinary," said the 33-year-old, who like many Indonesians goes by one name.
People in his village sheltered atop a local two-storey fish market to escape the deluge and were now trying to clean the mud and debris left behind while battling power and telecommunications outages.
"It's difficult for us (to get) clean water," he told AFP on Monday.
"There are children who are starting to get fevers, and there's no medicine."
The weather system that inundated Indonesia also brought heavy rain to southern Thailand, where at least 176 people were killed.
Across the border in Malaysia, two more people were killed.
