A bandjir (modern spelling banjir) is a sudden flood of a river in the Atjeh plain — typically the Atjeh River or its tributaries such as the Kroeng Daroe — caused by heavy monsoon rain in the interior, that periodically threatened the Dutch positions and communications around Kota Radja during the Atjeh-oorlog. The bandjir of 4 December 4 December 1874 that nearly cost Tweede-Luitenant C. J. Snijders his life — see bandjir at Penajoeng — is the most vividly recorded instance, but the biographer Van den Berg also records the embankment of the Kroeng Daroe and other drainage works undertaken by the Staf der Genie at Kota Radja in 1875 to make the Kraton free of bandjir.
The Bandjir of 4 December 1874
In the first days of December 1874 a bandjir threatened the two light trestle bridges that had been thrown across the Atjeh River at Pakan Atjeh and at Penajoeng. By preventing driftwood, tree-trunks, and creepers from collecting against the trestles, the Pakan Atjeh bridge was saved. The Penajoeng bridge was in greater danger, and on 4 December 4 December Snijders was sent there. The whole country was under water; unable to swim, he took three native mineurs who could. Wading to chest-height over the unpathed ground they reached Penajoeng in half an hour — only to see the surviving section of the bridge torn away by the flood. On the return march Snijders was seized by a cross-current at a point where he stood armpit-deep, and would have drowned had not his companions held out a stick by which he regained his footing.
The Bandjir-Control Works of 1875
After the close of his field engineer service with the Lamara Olejlo fortification of 15 February 1875, Snijders was attached to the Staf der Genie at Kota Radja for what were essentially peacetime duties. Among the works listed by Van den Berg are “appoleinngweekanneedd tot het bandjirvrijmaken van den Kraton (o.a. door bedijking van de Kroeng Daroe ter plaatse)” — drainage works to make the Kraton free of bandjir, including by the embankment of the Kroeng Daroe at the relevant place.
See Also
- Bandjir at Penajoeng (4 December 1874)
- Cornelis Jacobus Snijders
- Acheh River
- Kroeng Daroe
- Kraton of Aceh
- Koeta Radja
- Bataillon Mineurs en Sappeurs
- Aceh War
- 1874
- 1875
Account from Land en Volk van Atjeh Vroeger en Nu
Floods; primitive stuwdammen (dams) not resistant; significant flood danger due to short river courses in Aceh.
Source: J. Jongejans, Land en Volk van Atjeh Vroeger en Nu (Baarn: Hollandia Drukkerij N.V., c. 1938), pp. 60.
Source
D. van den Berg, Cornelis Jacobus Snijders (1852–1939): Een leven in dienst van zijn Land en zijn Volk (Voorburg: September 1944), pp. 27–28, 33. Koninklijke Bibliotheek shelfmark 0301 4872.
Land en Volk van Atjeh Vroeger en Nu, by J. Jongejans, Oud-Resident van het Gewest Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden, with a foreword by Dr. H. Colijn (Baarn: Hollandia Drukkerij N.V., c. 1938), pp. 60.