Waters recede in Bali after floods kill 18 people, with two still missing

DENPASAR/JAKARTA, Indonesia (Reuters) - Two people were still missing on Indonesia's resort island of Bali, officials said on Friday, as flood waters began to recede after killing at least 18 people this week, most of them swept away when rivers burst their banks.

Torrential rains on Tuesday and Wednesday caused the fast-rising floods in Denpasar and six of Bali's eight regions, blocking major roads and access to the island's international airport. There were also landslides in some areas.

Indonesia's disaster agency said in a statement that the death toll has risen to 18 from a previous 16 and the search for the two missing was still ongoing.

Rapid development on the island has not taken into account the need for sufficient drainage infrastructure, said I Nyoman Gede Maha Putra, an architecture and planning expert at the Warmadewa University in Denpasar.

"The city planning does not consider disasters," he told Reuters. "All of the infrastructure construction is geared toward making Bali more attractive to tourists and investors."

I Wayan Koster, Bali’s governor, was quoted by local media as saying, however, that conversion of land use was not to blame for this week’s flooding in Denpasar.

The regional development planning body for the Bali government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Tourism is Bali's main source of income, and last year, there were more than 6.3 million international tourist arrivals on the island, data from the country's Statistics Bureau shows, exceeding tourist arrivals from 2019, the year before the COVID-19 pandemic ground tourism to a halt.

Bali accounted for more than 40% of Indonesia's total tourist arrivals last year.

(Reporting by Sultan Anshori in Denpasar and Stanley Widianto in Jakarta; Editing by Tom Hogue, Alexandra Hudson)