With more than 70 percent of Jakarta and its surrounding areas affected by the flooding earlier this month, which forced over 300,000 people from their homes and claimed the lives of at least 80, a Scientology Disaster Relief Team of the Churches of Scientology of Australia and locally trained volunteers formed up and deployed to the area three weeks ago to help residents recover.

It was one thing to read about devastation in the news, but the volunteers were hardly prepared for what they saw when they arrived. There were stretches of the city where water levels had risen as high as 4 meters (over 12 feet), bridges had simply been washed away by the torrents, and many thousands were living without electricity, with no way to cook food or boil water to make it safe to drink.