Surfers Save Survivors

Rebuilding a town after the devastation of an earthquake

At the end of September a huge earthquake devastated the south coast of Sumatra, Indonesia. Surfaid International immediately launched an emergency appeal, and as the organisation's Kirk Wilcox explains, this was a very personal tragedy.

“I just can't believe I'm alive; the people right behind me didn't make it out. The blocks from the hotel were falling all around me,” wrote Dr David Lange in an email just hours after a 7.6 magnitude earthquake hit Padang, the capital of West Sumatra, Indonesia, on September 30th.

A few weeks earlier, Lange had joined SurfAid International as its programme director and he had just returned to Padang after working in the isolated Mentawai Islands, 150km to the west.

SurfAid, a not-for-profit humanitarian organisation, was started in 2000 after physician and surfer Dr Dave Jenkins went to the Mentawai Islands in search of perfect waves. But he also discovered women and children suffering the ravages of malaria and other preventable diseases. Jenkins established SurfAid to help alleviate human suffering through community-based health programmes. It has been operating in the Mentawai and Nias islands since 2000, running water and sanitation, emergency preparedness and health programs. It has an office in Padang and many staff and their families come from the city of 900,000.

The region is part of the Pacific Ring of Fire, a 40,000km horseshoe-shaped rim that concentrates the majority of the world’s largest earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. The Padang earthquake happened at 5.16pm and it was soon nightfall. “I can't imagine how I got out, it was like the floor was falling away as I ran over it,” Lange said. “I lost my passport, communications, all my money.  The city is burning; infrastructure appears damaged (water lines, sewer lines, power lines are down).”

Padang means 'field' and it is a flat city with the Bukit Barisan - literally ‘row of hills’ - volcanic mountain range looming in the background. A trading centre since the 16th century, it has the largest and busiest port on the west coast of Sumatra and is also the gateway to the surfing mecca of the Mentawai Islands. Australian Chris “Scuzz” Scurrah operates his surf charter business, Sumatran Surfariis, out of the Arau River, which snakes down from the dense jungle ranges and past Chinatown, with its magnificent old Dutch buildings, before flowing into the ocean. Chinatown was heavily hit.

In a stream of consciousness piece of prose on Facebook, Scuzz wrote: “It was a pretty radical quake, started slow and long interval, enough in most places to get up and out from under what you were in and start to run, then it got stronger and LOUD and was really rolling, opening up the ground, throwing power lines down, shaking trees like they were in a cyclone; big buildings were sort of semi exploding like bombs were in them and catching on fire, then it slowed and you heard screaming and crying, saw shock, saw people with legs under walls, blood, panic.”

Scuzz picked up a kid whose knee was hanging out of his leg: “He was in shock and calm, his dad grabbed him and I later found out he bled out in the hospital, no blood (available).”

Padang

Until a year ago I lived in Padang too, in my job as Communications Director for SurfAid. My home was also the office and fortunately it survived this earthquake, as it did with two earthquakes I experienced there in 2007, of 8.4 and 7.9 magnitude. We had staff, both local and foreign, who lost their houses this time and yet they came back to work to help others in the relief operation. 

It’s now more than a month since the earthquake and assistance has still not arrived in the remotest mountain areas that can only be reached by foot. Landslides triggered by the earthquake buried whole villages. Approximately 2.5 million people have been affected and the Indonesian Government estimates the rehabilitation and reconstruction will cost upwards of US$750 million. The death toll is currently 1,117 and the UN reports 3,900 injured, with more than half requiring specialised care. But the village-level data is still unavailable.

Up to 200,000 houses were severely or moderately damaged, along with 1,078 schools, and only 50 per cent of health facilities are operational. Camps have sprung up for what Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) call IDPs - internally displaced persons. Basically they’re homeless. And heavy tropical rains have increased the risk of further landslides.

There are more than 4,000 of these people displaced by mudslides around Lake Maninjau, a beautiful volcanic crater lake up in the mountains in the Agam district. I used to do the two-hour motorbike ride up there some weekends, with the thick tropical heat of Padang dissipating the higher you went up into the mountains, and then overnight in a small homestay on the lake after descending through 44 hairpin bends. They farm fish in netted pens and the journey transports you back to another time as you ride past fields where farmers still till the soil with bullocks. You’d stop and ask for directions and whole families would gather around and then wave you off on your way with huge smiles. They are the friendliest and most welcoming people in the world; people who work hard just to eke out a living to feed their families and put a roof over their heads, with the wonderful honesty of a simple life lived in a strongly bonded community.

After a disaster, getting a temporary roof over people’s heads is a priority. SurfAid concentrated its work in areas north of Padang, Pasaman Barat and Agam. Due to so many roads being destroyed, making access to some areas either impossible or difficult, we shipped emergency supplies up the coast via boat and then onto trucks for distribution to the villages.

In that period SurfAid bought US$310,000 of emergency relief supplies, shipping in and delivering 2,092 shelter kits, 1,721 tool kits (hammer, saw, shovel, nails), 939 tarpaulins, 791 blankets, 501 hygiene kits, 278 family tents and 212 sleeping mats. We’re looking at a total budget of US$700,000 in relief and recovery operations, though it could go as high as US$900,000.

The task ahead

We will be working up there for at least six months on relief and recovery, running emergency preparedness, sanitation and psychosocial programs; plus getting our normal program work back on track in the Mentawai and Nias.

“The psychological effects derived from a natural disaster of this scale are harder to see than the physical devastation, but are equally as important in the recovery period,” says SurfAid’s Matt Hannon.

Our psychosocial program, using psychologists and psychology students, is called Tampek Mangadu, which translates in the local Minangkabau language as “a shoulder to lean on”. We are particularly concentrating on helping children get their lives back to normal - getting them out playing with their friends, making them feel safe, promoting laughter, and giving them events to look forward to at the end of each month. Letting them be kids.

We already run Emergency Preparedness programs out in the islands. In 2006, after the Giant Asian Tsunami and Nias earthquake, SurfAid developed an “E-Prep” program, with the support of AusAID, that is designed to save lives and reduce suffering in the upcoming emergencies that are predicted to rattle this area again. The E-Prep program uses drama, song, video, artwork, comics, radio messaging and community-based emergency preparedness plans to train villagers in how to react quickly and decisively in the event of an earthquake, tsunami, flood, landslide or epidemic. Research shows that $1 spent on disaster preparedness saves up to $10 in disaster response and recovery.

The epicentre of the 30 September earthquake was very close to Padang - 30 miles/45km WNW of the city - however it wasn’t the big one that has long been predicted by the experts.  The pressure is building up from the movement of the Indo-Australian and Eurasian tectonic plates, and about every 200 years one plate slips abruptly under the other resulting in a massive upheaval, or “megathrust”, that can shift islands and lift coral reefs out of the water. This megathrust, in different parts of the plate interface, caused events like the 9.3 magnitude December 2004 tsunami, the 8.7 Nias earthquake in March 2005, and the 8.4 and 7.9 Mentawai earthquakes of September 2007. But this latest earthquake occurred in a totally different place and has relieved no pressure along a combined 600km stretch that last ruptured in 1797 and 1833, and the subsequent undersea earthquakes caused big tsunamis that hit Padang.

“Another earthquake is on its way, and all it will take to trigger it is the pressure of a handshake,” Northern Ireland seismologist John McCloskey told New Scientist. And very likely a tsunami will follow, with waves as high as 12 metres.

Geologist Kerry Sieh, director of the Earth Observatory of Singapore, said the next big quake, expected with the next few decades, would last more than six times as long as this most recent one, AFP reported.“We expect it will be about a magnitude 8.8, plus or minus say 0.1,” Sieh said. The most recent quake lasted about 45 seconds - “This one’ll last about five minutes. This 7.6 is very, very small, minuscule compared to the great earthquakes.”

Wilcox is Communications Director for SurfAid. You can donate to SurfAid’s Padang Earthquake Appeal at www.surfaidinternational.org