The death toll from last week’s catastrophic floods and landslides across parts of Asia climbed past 1,500 on Thursday, as rescue teams struggled to reach survivors stranded in remote, devastated communities and hundreds remained missing.

Authorities reported 837 fatalities in Indonesia, 479 in Sri Lanka, 185 in Thailand, and three in Malaysia, with at least 861 people still unaccounted for in Indonesia and Sri Lanka alone. Entire villages in both countries remain buried beneath mud, rocks, and debris.

The humanitarian crisis deepened as thousands in isolated regions faced acute shortages of food, clean water, and medical supplies. Floodwaters and landslides destroyed bridges, roads, and power lines, severing access to many communities and complicating rescue operations.

Adding to the tragedy were mounting warnings from environmental groups and residents that decades of deforestation—driven by illegal logging, mining, palm oil expansion, and unchecked development—had stripped the land of natural protections, worsening the severity of the disaster.

“We need the government to investigate and fix forest management,” said Rangga Adiputra, a 31-year-old teacher from West Sumatra whose home was swept away. He said illegal logging had scarred the hillsides above his village near Padang.
“We don’t want this costly disaster to happen again.”

Indonesian television showed massive piles of felled timber rushing downstream in North Sumatra, West Sumatra, and Aceh, underscoring the scale of environmental degradation.

The environmental organization WALHI, Indonesia’s largest advocacy group, said the destruction was not solely the result of extreme weather but was “amplified by decades of deforestation” that eliminated forests’ ability to absorb rainfall and stabilize soil.

“Deforestation and unchecked development have stripped Sumatra of its resilience,” said WALHI activist Rianda Purba. “This disaster was not just nature’s fury.”