Life on the Rim: Indonesia

By Barrie | December 26th, 2006 | No Comments

Indonesia, the world’s largest archipelago, is prone to seismic upheaval due to its location on the so-called Pacific “Ring of Fire,” an arc of volcanoes and fault lines encircling the Pacific Basin.

As the year closes to an end, two journalists from the JP, Ati Nurbaiti and Hyginus Hardoyo, assess the natural disasters that have struck Indonesia during this year and discuss what it is like living on the Pacific Ring of Fire.

It’s dangerous life on the Ring of Fire
Ati Nurbaiti and Hyginus Hardoyo, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Indonesia has never been a safe place to live in — but it’s home.
And so with the unprecedented tsunami in late 2004, many here have begun to slowly wake up to the notion of having to live with the realization that the ground we tread on is actually wobbly way down under. Such geological activities have the potential to throw up black waves 10 to 50 meters high when the seabed cracks.

The volcanoes are still rumbling — sometimes loudly, more often inaudible. Landslides and flooding wait to suddenly pour mud on us for weeks on end, regardless of whether we’re busy blaming illegal logging, reckless building or anything else.

It seems any degree of building up knowledge, if any, has failed to reach a wide scale — only after the loss of thousands of lives did some recall the 1884 Krakatau volcano eruption and ensuing tsunami in West Java and old tales of recognizing the fatal signs of receding seawater.

After 2004, experts warned us about Lake Toba, the resort hours away from North Sumatra’s capital of Medan — it might be about time again, they said, for a recurring blast since the first one turned the original volcano upside down.

Earthquake occurred in irregular cycles and active fault lines could produce up to three quakes a century, North Sumatra Indonesian Geologists Society coordinator Jonathan I. Tarigan said.

“The quake will be from 6 to 7 points on the Richter scale,” a high enough level to cause fatalities, Jonathan said.

“If you look at the previous occurrences of earthquakes, then one along the fault lines in North Sumatra is imminent,” he said.

In the case of the May earthquakes in Yogyakarta and Central Java the uncertainty of what to do was most evident; residents scrambled up a smoldering Merapi in fear of a tsunami following the earthquake, hoping the volcano would not choose such a merciless time to explode.

After the earthquake and tsunami in Aceh and North Sumatra, authorities announced plans to make artificial hills for escape routes in the event of earthquakes and tsunamis in coastal areas, particularly resorts such as Pelabuhan Ratu in West Java. No such plan had begun to materialize when a tsunami, albeit on a much smaller scale, shocked us again in July, this time in the seaside resort of Pangandaran.

People here always find a reason to say things could have been worse. It’s lucky that the tsunami of Dec. 26, 2004 in Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam hit on a Sunday, a resident said: “If it was Monday many more would have been killed.”

Similarly in Pangandaran the disaster occurred just one day after most children had ended vacation and returned to school.

Fisherfolk were left to pick up their lives, joining the multitudes of victims of other calamities across the country.

We have yet to learn from past disasters, to prevent unnecessary loss of life and damage.

Public campaigns including those targeting school children have been conducted on how to recognize imminent disasters and how to seek safety, mainly in disaster-prone areas including the capital, where most urbanites working in the towers would panic in the event of earthquakes.

Meanwhile throughout the year tremors of around 5 on the Richter scale and even more were reported from various places — from the still traumatized people of Aceh and Central Java to remote islands off Maluku, Manado and Papua where residents fear a tsunami.

As we hope the ability to predict disasters improves among the experts, while they say we often ignore ongoing efforts at public education, the resulting uncertainty is rather scary for residents and holidaymakers, with resort managers blaming the press for their losses owing to “misleading” reports.

The coordination of rescue and aid efforts has been another issue each time nature strikes. Developing distrust in authorities led volunteers and locals to try to sort out the distribution of assistance themselves, such as in the case of Yogyakarta’s remote areas.

A big difference appeared: The volunteers’ distribution works quickly and effectively reached those really in need, while those organized by the authorities were jammed in a lengthy and arduous bureaucratic network. Quake victims were forced to queue for hours and show their identity cards at their village offices just to receive three packs of instant noodles.

The poor conditions were worsened by a big blunder on the part of the authorities, who were quick to make promises of reconstruction funds for damaged houses, but fell short of materializing them due to the lack of money.

Trust remains a crucial issue in times of disaster. Locals in Yogyakarta chose to trust a traditional gatekeeper of Mount Merapi, Mbah Marijan, who refused to budge despite all those intimidating bursts of the mountain’s smoke — they remained unconvinced that their interests were being taken care of, saying no one would be left to feed their cattle if they moved to shelters.

Of course authorities said they were being irrational and attempted several times to move them nonetheless — but it is maybe the habit to fend for themselves without much support that remains the source of distrust among the hard-headed locals.

As the early warning system for earthquakes and tsunamis has just recently been installed in Aceh, other preventive measures, including information campaigns on various possible disasters must continue.

Consistency would help locals trust that the leaders will try their best to look out for all residents, as long as we do our bit in educating ourselves — for the volcanoes will keep rumbling across our “Ring of Fire”, and our homes will still be stuck along the fault lines.