Rescuers raise Indonesia landslide death toll to 25 as 72 remain missing

# Rescuers raise Indonesia landslide death toll to 25 as 72 remain missing

Event date: 2026-01-25. Rescuers in West Java have recovered 25 bodies after a landslide buried homes in Pasir Langu village, with 72 people still missing and hundreds of residents evacuated as officials warn the slope may remain unstable.

The AP report says improved weather helped search teams on Sunday, allowing them to keep working through mud and debris after a predawn landslide on the slopes of Mount Burangrang. The slide buried about 34 houses in Pasir Langu village in West Bandung district. By the time of the report, 72 people remained missing and a 250-member search team had recovered 25 victims, including body parts, in 14 body bags.

This is a disaster with both immediate and lingering effects. The AP report says about 230 residents living near the site were evacuated to government shelters, while rescue workers used farm tools and bare hands because the loose ground made heavy equipment unsafe. The scale of the operation and the method of recovery show how precarious the terrain remained even after the main slide had passed.

The report also makes clear that officials were not treating the event as simply a freak weather episode. Indonesian Vice President Gibran Rakabuming Raka pledged measures to prevent similar disasters and urged local authorities to address land conversion in disaster-prone areas. Environmental activists quoted in the AP story argued that the slide reflected years of environmental degradation and violations of land-use rules, not just heavy rain.

That context matters because it changes the way the disaster should be read. A landslide can be triggered by rain, but the AP report suggests the broader vulnerability may come from the way the land has been used and altered over time. The North Bandung Area, or KBU, is described as a conservation zone and water-catchment buffer, yet activists say spatial-planning rules have long been ignored there.

The human toll is still unfolding. The AP report says teams were using drones and K-9s to locate bodies along a slide that stretched more than 2 kilometers. It also says the operation would continue nonstop as long as conditions allowed, though more rain could destabilize the slope further. That means the current death toll may not be final.

The source also situates the event within a wider national pattern. Seasonal rains and high tides from about October to April commonly cause floods and landslides across Indonesia. In a country with thousands of islands and many mountainous communities, the combination of steep terrain, rain and development pressure can turn a single slope failure into a mass-casualty disaster.

What is verified here is enough to tell the story without overreaching. A landslide in West Java killed 25 people and left 72 missing. Homes were buried. Residents were evacuated. Searchers kept digging. Officials and activists are now arguing over whether the disaster was driven solely by weather or by longer-term environmental mismanagement as well.