The
children looked like they wanted to trash the place. They shook
the desks and rattled the tables with such force some almost
toppled over.
A teacher in the classroom urged them on. They shook all the
harder. But here in the land of the trembling earth they hardly
needed encouragement. They were simulating an earthquake and
the last one had been at the weekend.
It was all part of a new lesson that the Indonesian Red Cross
(PMI) had introduced to an elementary school in Krueng Raya,
a small community on the north coast of Aceh, the region hardest
hit by the Indian Ocean tsunami. Instead of the mathematics
lesson they had expected, the children were getting disasters.
At a sign from the teacher, the noise stopped, and they took
cover under the desks they had done their best to demolish.
A minute passed, then out they came again, shaking and rattling
the furniture until the class was evacuated.
In the schoolyard, the children laughed and squealed, but the
lesson was serious business. The school is new. When the tsunami
demolished most of Krueng Raya almost two years ago, the old
school was washed away along with 2,239 others in Aceh.
Today, much more endangers the children. A Red Cross Red Crescent
analysis of 63 villages in this province at the tip of Sumatra,
and on the island of Nias, shows them threatened on all sides
by disaster.
A litany of hazards has been identified. Illegal logging and
irresponsible quarrying induce landslides. Poorly constructed
buildings, weak infrastructure, ignorance, and a lack of coastal
protection and embankments leave communities wide open to earthquakes,
tsunamis and shoreline erosion. An absence of shelters and escape
routes aggravates the dangers.
High tides and obstructed rivers worsen flooding. Limited sources
of potable water, scant irrigation for rice fields, and diminishing
forests make the seasons longer and dryer and the droughts harsher.
A lack of medical services and low community understanding exacerbate
malaria, diarrhoea, skin diseases and tuberculosis.
The analysis confirms the enormity of a multi-year Aceh challenge,
and underlines the International Federation’s insistence
that long-term risk reduction must be part of global development
programming. Years of development can be washed away or shattered
in a matter of moments. Nowhere is that more evident than in
Indonesia. It has averaged as many as 2.75 disasters a day over
a 12-month period.
Disaster preparedness and risk reduction are at the core of
Red Cross Red Crescent tsunami recovery operations. In Aceh,
as elsewhere in the country, the International Federation is
supporting a PMI community-based risk reduction programme.
PMI has launched the first phase of an Aceh-wide early warning
system to provide vulnerable communities with government warnings
through a Red Cross radio network. But that alone will not protect
Aceh from disaster. Far reaching community change is needed
and, crucially, PMI has trained staff and volunteers to increase
disaster awareness and preparedness in the province.
The analysis of the 63 villages has come from community self-assessments.
With Red Cross guidance, the villagers have sat down, mapped
the hazards they face and discussed what could be done about
them. A plan of action has been developed based on the findings,
starting in 2007. Village contingency plans, community action
teams, the development of escape routes and safe havens are
among the measures planned.
A schools programme is high on the agenda, not only to make
schools themselves safer, but also to teach children to become
the disaster guides in their families.
It is the poor and under privileged who are most vulnerable.
Cycles of hazards threaten them. Along the coast of Aceh Besar
where the sea now laps idyllically, farmers and fishermen tell
of lives punctuated by peril. The tsunami was preceded by decades
of danger, they say. There was the earthquake in 1984, the landslides,
the destructive storms, to say nothing of the annual high tides
that destroy farmland and fish ponds, the recurrent malaria,
the endemic diarrhoea and rainy season fever.
The mountains rise sharply behind them. The Indian Ocean glistens
before them. They are truly caught between a rock and a hard
place.
Now the Red Cross has helped them to develop disaster calendars.
They cannot predict the earthquakes, but they do know the patterns
– that from December to March serious storms can occur,
and from July to September huge waves can be expected. They
know the rainy season can cause landslides.
A village leader in Leupung sub-district looked up to the hills.
“We have fields up there, and gardens,” he said.
“Sometimes people want to extend their land, and plant
more crops. They are not rich. You cannot blame them. But when
big trees are cut the danger of landslides increases.”
Since the risk mapping, clearing land has been banned where
homes could be threatened. Thinking has begun to change. If
trees and bushes with a good spread of roots were planted, the
hillside could be stabilized, the leader said. Better still,
he went on, if the trees and bushes were to yield fruit they
would boost the farmers’ incomes.
Harun Al Rashid, the International Federation’s disaster
management delegate in Aceh, said “The challenge is to
make risk reduction part of the culture. You need motivation.
You need people to understand that because of what they do they
can provide a better life for their sons and daughters.”
Al Rashid speaks from experience. He was part of the Bangladesh
Red Crescent cyclone preparedness programme that has saved millions
of lives along the Bay of Bengal. Launched after a devastating
cyclone in 1970, it has included the construction of cyclone
shelters and the development of early warning systems and preparedness
at community level.
Since this programme, there has been a huge decrease in the
number of deaths. The 1970 cyclone claimed more than 300,000
lives, but cyclones of a similar scale in 1997 and 1998 killed
111 and 19 respectively.
A cyclone was the turning point for Bangladesh. The tsunami
must be for Aceh. Natural hazards need not be disasters.
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Reading
up on disaster preparedness. More compelling than mathematics,
the lesson is one of survival. (p15253)
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All
eyes and ears in the Red Cross class. Disasters are not
theoretical. (p15254)
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Cartoons
in the classroom have an attentive audience. Animation
with serious messages. (p15255)
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Taking
cover in the classroom. The pupils find it fun but it
is serious business. (p15251)
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A
schools programme is high on the agenda, not only to make
schools themselves safer, but also to teach children to
become the disaster guides in their families. (p15257)
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