'Mini tsunami' kills 58 after Indonesia dam breaks

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CIRENDEU, Indonesia, Mar 27 (AP): Torrential rain caused a colonial-era dam to burst its banks early Friday, sending a wall of muddy water crashing into a suburb of the Indonesian capital. The flood killed at least 58 people, left scores missing and submerged hundreds of homes.
Rescuers used rubber rafts to pluck bodies from streets that were transformed into muddy rivers littered with motorcycles, chairs and other debris.
They predicted the death toll would rise.
The earthen dam, built in the early 1900s when Indonesia was still under Dutch colonial rule, surrounded a man-made lake in Cirendeu on the southwestern edge of Jakarta. It collapsed just after 2 am when most people were sleeping, sending two million cubic metres of water cascading into homes.
Several survivors said it felt like they'd been hit by a "mini-tsunami."
Water levels were so high in some places that people waited on rooftops for rescuers. Telephone lines were toppled and cars swept away, some ending up hundreds of metres from where they'd been parked.
By mid afternoon, hundreds of victims gathered at nearby Muhammadiyah University, which was transformed into a makeshift morgue. Many were wailing as soldiers and police brought in bodies, covering them in white sheets of plastic.
Cecep Rahman, 63, lost his wife, son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter in the disaster.
"I heard a crashing sound and looked out my window," he choked. "The tide was so strong, like a tsunami. They were swept away ... there was nothing I could do."
An investigation by the ministry of public works will be carried out to see what caused the disaster, it said.