North Aceh survivors are building new homes from Cyclone Senyar’s flood logs, months after the storm killed more than 1,200 people across Sumatra. That is according to ABC Australia’s Indonesia correspondent Tim Swanston, who visited the villages of Lokh Pungki, Babah Krueng, and Geudumbak in Sawang district months after the November 2025 disaster.
In Geudumbak, Rosniati lost her home and farmland to the floods — and was direct with Swanston: “We don’t have houses anymore. So we build houses.” The storm wrecked thousands of homes in Sawang district and damaged tens of thousands more, with the valley’s rice fields and gardens now buried beneath timber and silt.
Environmental NGO Bytra North Aceh estimates the province lost approximately 82,000 hectares of forest cover over the past decade — including roughly 8,000 hectares in North Aceh alone — and director Muhadi Bukhari told Swanston his organisation had spent years raising alarms about illegal activity inside Aceh’s forest areas. “That loss of forest cover has directly contributed to the severity of today’s flooding,” he said.
Lokh Pungki village head Firmadi told Swanston that by 3 a.m., the floodwaters were already dangerously high and large logs were crashing into homes and carrying them off, with a palm oil plantation of several thousand hectares sitting upstream and the timber’s precise origin still unresolved months on.
In response, Indonesia suspended harvesting across provinces, then launched criminal probes against 11 logging firms, uncovering a timber-laundering network in which illegal logs were mixed with legal stock to enter the formal supply chain. Earthsight and Auriga Nusantara later tied hundreds of hectares of illegal clearing inside PT Toba Pulp Lestari’s concession directly to the worst-hit watersheds.
Across Sawang district, villagers were cutting flood logs into planks and building shelter from the debris that had destroyed their homes well before government aid reached them. The timber that tore through their villages was the only building material available.
President Prabowo Subianto pledged to “crack down hard on illegal logging” and announced licence reviews, with permits for more than two dozen companies revoked following an environmental audit. Bukhari welcomed the moves whilst telling the ABC that the effectiveness of those revocations would still need to be examined closely.
Sawang’s riverbeds have filled with sediment, embankments remain broken, and officials warn that ordinary rain now poses a greater flood risk than before Senyar. The disaster agency’s budget has fallen below a third of its pandemic-era $646 million, with 2026 cuts further reducing it.
Mulyadi, from the district disaster agency, told Swanston the warning was plain: “We’re extremely concerned that if deforestation continues, the consequences will be catastrophic.” It comes after Regional Secretary Jamaluddin has put North Aceh’s damage at IDR 27 trillion ($2.3 billion), spanning housing, roads, bridges, schools, clinics, and river dredging. Mulyadi confirmed that the district disaster agency operates only six rubber boats and four operational vehicles.
