Banjir Kanal Krueng Aceh yang berakhir di Samudra Hindia; 2013

The Aceh river on the island of

Sumatra Sumatra is one of the Sunda Islands of western Indonesia. It is the largest island that is fully within Indonesian territory, as well as the sixth-largest island in the world at 473,481 km2 (182,812 mi.2), not including adjacent i ...

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Gui ...

flows from mountains that include the 2780-metre high Mount Peuët Sagoë for some two hundred kilometres northeastward to reach the junction of the

Indian Ocean The Indian Ocean is the third-largest of the world's five oceanic divisions, covering or ~19.8% of the water on Earth's surface. It is bounded by Asia to the north, Africa to the west and Australia to the east. To the south it is bounded by ...

and the

Andaman Sea The Andaman Sea (historically also known as the Burma Sea) is a marginal sea of the northeastern Indian Ocean bounded by the coastlines of Myanmar and Thailand along the Gulf of Martaban and west side of the Malay Peninsula, and separated fro ...

Banda Aceh Banda Aceh ( Acehnese: ''Banda Acèh'', Jawoë: كوتا بند اچيه) is the capital and largest city in the province of Aceh, Indonesia. It is located on the island of Sumatra and has an elevation of . The city covers an area of and had ...

, the capital of

Aceh Province Aceh ( ), officially the Aceh Province ( ace, Nanggroë Acèh; id, Provinsi Aceh) is the westernmost province of Indonesia. It is located on the northernmost of Sumatra island, with Banda Aceh being its capital and largest city. Granted a spe ...

.Krueng Aceh Jangan Disia-siakan
/ref> The river has a catchment area of some 1775 square kilometres. The river has a flow of up to 30,000 cubic meters per second.28 December 2009 interview with

Peter Hines Peter Hines (born 31 October 1948) is a former Australian rules footballer who played with Footscray in the Victorian Football League The Victorian Football League (VFL) is an Australian rules football league in Australia serving a ...

, a 1986-1992 Resident Engineer increasing the river flow. This enormous flow frequently flooded Banda Aceh and the land upstream from the town.

Flood prevention

The

Japanese Government The Government of Japan consists of legislative, executive and judiciary branches and is based on popular sovereignty. The Government runs under the framework established by the Constitution of Japan, adopted in 1947. It is a unitary state, ...

provided Indonesia an aid package to reduce flooding. From 1986 to 1992 the Japanese consultants Pacific Consultants International with Japanese, South Korean and Indonesian contractors reconstructed the river's seaward-end 25 kilometres and built a diversion channel almost entirely preventing flooding. The British

civil engineer A civil engineer is a person who practices civil engineering – the application of planning, designing, constructing, maintaining, and operating infrastructure while protecting the public and environmental health, as well as improving existing ...

was the coordinator for the six years of documentation and meetings agreed to be in English for the Indonesian, Japanese, and Korean languages needed on site and in

Djakarta Jakarta (; , bew, Jakarte), officially the Special Capital Region of Jakarta ( id, Daerah Khusus Ibukota Jakarta) is the capital city, capital and list of Indonesian cities by population, largest city of Indonesia. Lying on the northwest coa ...

, the capital city of

. By the 1980s, the

English language English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the ...

had recently become the world's business ''

lingua franca A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, vehicular language, or link language, is a language systematically used to make communication possible between groups ...

''.''Beanz means Hines / Peter Hines — the worldwide civil engineer'' page 21. 50 kilometres of 8-metre plastic mattresses were woven in Heathcoat Fabrics' factory in Tiverton,

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...

, and on site sewn together and filled with

grout Grout is a dense fluid which hardens to fill gaps or used as reinforcement in existing structures. Grout is generally a mixture of water, cement and sand, and is employed in pressure grouting, embedding rebar in masonry walls, connecting sect ...

to line the sandy river banks.''Beanz means Hines / Peter Hines — the worldwide civil engineer'' pages 18-21. The project included 12 bridges (designed to span the enormous ''seaward'' river flow): 11 survived undamaged the 26 December 2004 undersea 9.3-magnitude earthquake and tsunami that killed some 31,000 Banda Aceh people and ''swept water up some 40 kilometres of the river''. The 12th bridge (the closest bridge to the sea) collapsed because it had a ''single'' pre-cast beam as it was only a pedestrian bridge linking two fishing villages (these villages were completely destroyed by the tsunami). After

President Suharto Suharto (; ; 8 June 1921 – 27 January 2008) was an Indonesian army officer and politician, who served as the second and the longest serving president of Indonesia. Widely regarded as a military dictator by international observers, Suharto l ...

had made a speech at the opening ceremony, he was asked by an 80-year-old man if another bridge could be built to reduce the distance he cycled to his farmland. The President replied ''"Carry on cycling and you will live for ever!".''

References

{{Rivers of Sumatra Rivers of Aceh Rivers of Indonesia

Flood prevention

See also

References