Asia Pacific Disaster Response

Blog Post:  Posted November 4, 2009, 8:24 pm by Steve Mitchell

Honored to be back among a people I love

Country: Samoa

Topics: Emergencies

It had been 33 years since I had lived there. When I heard that an earthquake and resulting tsunami had struck the Samoa Islands on September 29, I was taken back to a time when I had lived among the Samoan people as a young missionary.

The Samoan people I knew were a friendly, open and culturally rich people with deep traditions of respect and honor. I was deeply concerned, and felt Mercy Corps could be of assistance.

With support from Mercy Corps’ generous donors and assistance from Western Union, I knew that we could do much to assist the traumatized and devastated communities along the southern and eastern coasts of Upolu and Manono, two of several Samoan islands hit hard by the earthquake and resulting tsunami.

Upon arriving in Samoa, and after a long drive from the capital city of Apia, my fellow Mercy Corps colleague Carol Ward and I arrived in the southeastern district of Aleipata in Upolu, one on the most severely affected areas. Relying upon my rusty Samoan language skills acquired so many years before, I spoke with a village chief doing repairs with members of his family on his badly-damaged home near the beach.

As I expressed deep condolences for his village’s losses, he immediately interrupted me to express his profound gratitude and deep appreciation to all the people of America and abroad for their support of food, water and shelter. He even wished the blessing of God upon us as we conducted our work. As he thanked Mercy Corps for being there, I could not help but think that the Samoan culture of courtesy and gratitude that I knew so many years ago persisted even in this time of deep suffering. Under the worst of circumstances, I felt honored to be among a people I had come to love so long ago.

As Carol and I travelled along the only road linking villages in the district, we had heard that the village of Lalomanu, further south, had been particularly hard hit. As we summited a small rise in the road, and looked out upon what was left of Lalomanu, I was utterly shocked at the devastation. This village, which I later learned had the most fatalities, was simply no more. The surging waters had wreaked utter destruction.

One family, encamped in a salvaged home with tarpaulin covers, said they needed more help to reestablish themselves, and that many of their fellow villagers had moved inland because of their fear of the ocean, a recurring topic of discussion with the affected Samoans we met with. One woman I met with, as she looked out to sea, said she was afraid, or “fefe” of the ocean. The look in her eyes clearly demonstrated this fact. Particularly heart-rending was learning that so many children has perished, being unable to escape the rushing waters. Flowers marked the places where loved ones were lost. Bedding, clothing, tools, household goods, toys and building debris were scattered everywhere.

A later meeting I had with the Deputy Minister of Finance, Noumea Simi, helped me to understand what the beleaguered Samoan government was confronted with in reestablishing whole new villages inland from the ocean for devastated costal communities. Since so many affected villagers were terrified of living near the shore, the Government had to build roads, bring in power and put in infrastructure for these new inland communities, all the while having to rebuild the heavily damaged coastal village infrastructure for those Samoans not wanting to move away from their traditional home sites.

The following day, we travelled with representatives of our partner agency, South Pacific Business Development (SPBD), to the island of Manono to assess the cash-for-work programme implemented the prior week by SPBD, and funded by Mercy Corps and Western Union. The cash-for-work programme pays each villager needed cash for documented hours of work, typically at the end of the week, to do clean up and reconstruction.

After a slow boat ride from the eastern coast of Upolu, we arrived near the villages of Faleu and Lepuia’i. No vehicles of any kind are to be found on Manono, as the island is too small and isolated from the larger islands. The Manono villages, like others in Samoa, are nestled right up against the waters edge, to take advantage of cool breezes that keep the mosquitoes at bay and ensure proximity to the abundant supply of food take from the reef.

The earthquakes’ two tsunami surges had flowed over the village seawalls and destroyed homes and eroded foundations. Upon our arrival, we noticed numerous men in the village placing rocks in severely eroded areas of Lepuia’i village that threatened a home and the village church. Further down the coast, we saw extensive repair work to the seawall protecting both villages. For the past week, under the cash-for-work programme, 51 men had done an amazing amount of restorative work to damaged seawalls and ground erosion.

Not only did major infrastructure repair work get done in these communities, but desperately needed cash was injected into their economies. Each worker earned 100 Samoa Tala, or about £24, for one week’s worth work, a significant amount of money where the per capita income is less than £600 per year.

I had the privilege, along with our party, or accepting the heartfelt thanks, or “fa’afetai lava” of the village workers and chiefs for this badly needed programme. They were truly amazed at the response of Mercy Corps and South Pacific Business Development to help their tiny island come back from this tragedy. Mercy Corps’ funding will help do more cash-for-work programming in Manono and the hardest hit areas of Upolu.

On the returning boat ride from Manono, as I looked out over the beautiful sea — the same sea that had caused so much pain and suffering to the wonderful Samoan people — I took great comfort knowing that the Samoan people were resilient and enduring, the same traits I recalled them having so many decades before.

Blog Post:  Posted October 27, 2009, 1:08 pm by Carol Ward

Cash-for-work begins in Samoan villages

Country: Samoa

Topics: Emergencies

We started our cash-for-work programme yesterday, alongside our partners from South Pacific Business Development (SPBD), in Samoan villages that were devastated by the recent tsunami. Local workers are earning a fair daily wage — which helps their families and puts money back into the economy — while helping to clear debris, restore and rebuild their homes and villages.

In Lepuiai — the village pictured above — they can use the rocks from the old sea walls, together with stone that is nearby, to help rebuild infrastructure. So that is not too bad.

The other village, Faleu, has a bit more work to do — they have to carry the stones down the hill from a quarry where other workers are busy pulling rocks from the hillside and breaking them. They know that their village depends on them to do a good job because this is cyclone season, and a storm could further erode the foundations of the houses that still stand and break the road running between the two villages.

Everyone is working so hard!

Blog Post:  Posted October 17, 2009, 9:14 am by Malka Older

Restoring the flow

Country: Indonesia

Topics: Water/Sanitation, Emergencies

Electricity is back up and the cell phones are mostly working again — at least as well as they ever did — but there is still no running water in Padang city.

The earthquake on September 30 damaged both water sources and piping infrastructure, to the extent that the city water company has requested metal detectors so that they can find their pipes. While most of the wells in rural areas are still functioning, though they were messy for a while after the quake, in the city there are few wells and most of those are badly contaminated. In our office, where I have been living for the past two weeks with many of our staff, we have water trucked in daily to fill up a plastic tank in the yard, and pump it into the bathroom water tank a few times a day (Indonesian bathrooms traditionally have a tiled tank from which water is scooped out to shower or wash with).

For most inhabitants of the city, it’s been bottled water or the river. Which, as the only source of water that’s still running, is also where people go to bathe, wash clothes and (not speculation, I saw this) defecate.

To try to fill the gap, the Padang public water company, with the help of Aetra — a private water company based in Java — has been trucking water to tanks or bladders throughout the city. This water also comes from the river, but via a reverse-osmosis treatment plant operated by the Australian military as part of their relief effort (and, eventually, going back to Australia). The cost of the trucking is huge, and fast decimating the budget of the water company as they simultaneously dig ditches all over the city in hope of finding their pipes (they do seem to have SOME idea of where they are).

To support this effort, and the needs of urban Sumatrans with no recourse to safe water, Mercy Corps is helping the trucking through a voucher system for their fuel. Yesterday, I took a ride with one of the trucks to see how the system worked.

The truck was driven by an Aetra employee, Fahruddin, who was accompanied by an employee from the local water company, Risman, to help direct him through the Padang streets. Fahruddin told me he was happy to have come from his home in Java to help the relief effort for the earthquake.

“It’s normal, right?” he said. “Everyone wants to help.”

They pulled the truck up in a narrow residential street, and jumped out to attach the hoses to a water bladder sitting, mostly deflated, in someone’s front lawn. Risman pulled out a tap stand, a sawhorse made of pipes that distributed the flow to eight different taps, so that more people could collect the water at once. As soon as the truck had pulled up, a two women and a small child had walked over to sit waiting opposite the bladder, with five empty gallon containers. As the men fiddled with the pipes, more people came down the street, carrying buckets or barrels, one with a wheelbarrow to carry it back.

Once the water was flowing, every tap was in use, the water flowing into the containers. A man came on a motor bike and took away two of the filled gallon containers, and the woman switched in empty ones.

As the water ran, I looked around. It was not a very poor neighborhood, but not a rich one either. The houses looked a bit worn. But they were well constructed and none of them showed much earthquake damage. But all these people had been without running water for over two weeks, and might be for longer still.

Despite the appearance of solidity, their way of life along the fault line was still fragile.

Blog Post:  Posted October 15, 2009, 2:47 pm by Malka Older

Landslides make isolated Indonesian villages resemble 'lost continent'

Country: Indonesia

Topics: Emergencies

Two weeks after the earthquake, my colleagues and I got on motorcycles and headed north out of Padang and up into the mountains around Bukit Tinggi. We were going to check out an isolated area that we had heard was badly affected by landslides and had barely been reached.

Our team had approached the day before, but been unable to reach by car, so we were trying with the bikes. We drove along the main road north, past the pieces of houses, new tarpaulins stretched in front of them. We passed our distribution sites, other NGO distribution sites, trucks full of goods, small private cars full of donations, and towns where everyone was going about their business as though they still had houses instead of ruins. As we started to work our way up into the hills the air cooled and vast panoramas of paddy fields stretched out beside us, idyllic views reaching to shadowy mountains in the distance.

Clouds gathered in the heights as we turned off the main road towards our destination, and followed a winding mountain road. It started to drizzle, and then to pour, and we pulled off the muddy road at a small shack already crowded with people. They were not just stranded travelers, though; they were a family and a half that had fled from the landslides and had been living in the shack for two weeks. I shared the snacks we had brought with a six-year-old boy named Darman while we waited for the rain to stop (he didn’t want his photo taken). His father refused to accept the peanut candy until I had one too. “We came here after the landslides, and now our village has gotten help and we haven’t gotten anything,” he told me.

“Why don’t you go back?” I asked him.

“We have nothing left there,” he told me. “All we had is gone.”

The rain had slowed and we got back on the bikes, waving good-bye to the group in the shack. Although the rain was no longer heavy, the road had been badly damaged by the landslides, and we drove cautiously through the mud for another five kilometers. There was no sound but the quiet rumble of our motors, and the rain ticking against our helmets. At times we were actually inside clouds, and the air was chill through our damp clothes. The worst part, though, was the sight of the trees uprooted by landslides, the mounds of dirt strewn across the road, the crumbled edge of the road.

At last we wound our way down into a valley, the fog cleared, and we saw the village, clusters of houses surrounded by yellowing rice fields. We wound our way through narrow streets, past crumbled houses, stopping occasionally to ask questions. An old woman showed us her destroyed shell of a house, and told us that now she stayed in her parents house. In one sub-village 77 houses were damaged, in another 23. At last we found the main government building, and walked in, shaking the rain from our jackets. A few local officials emerged from the interior offices to greet us. I walked over to look at a board they had put up, with a list of names, genders, ages. Next to some of the names was written “found”.

“Is that the list of missing?” I asked the small man who had greeted us.

“That is the list of dead,” he told me. “The ones with the notes are the ones whose bodies have been found.”

Below was another list, this one of damaged houses. The total for the four main villages came to over 2,000.

“The irrigation channels have been broken in the landslides too,” the small man told us. “We are worried we will lose the harvest.”

I remembered the yellow tinge to the rice fields. “How many of the people here are farmers?” I asked.

“Eighty percent,” he told me.

After getting information from the officials about what sort of aid they had already received, most of it food donations from the government or from nearby villages, we got slowly back on the motorcycles and drove through the rest of the area. It was getting dark, and when it started to rain again, we stopped in a small shop for coffee. The man who served us, it turned out, was not the owner of the shop. It was his brother’s, and he was staying there since his house had been destroyed and eight members of his family killed in the landslides.

As we drove on I watched the houses slide by, some of them broken, some standing. We passed through a poor section of the village, tiny old houses made of wood, everything looking slightly rotted in the moist air, kerosene lamps shining from inside. It felt like a lost continent, so remote from the frenzy of aid and recovery on the main road half an hour away.

The next day we met with one of our partner agencies to plan a complementary distribution of their tools and our hygiene kits for the landslide and earthquake survivors in the village.

Blog Post:  Posted October 12, 2009, 1:34 pm by Malka Older

Doing the (sometimes) heavy lifting

Country: Indonesia

Topics: Emergencies

The trucks arrived at night, pulling up at our warehouse one by one. They had driven for four full days from Jakarta, pausing only to sleep from 1 A.M. to 5 A.M. in the truck on the side of the road.

Our warehouse, on the road from Padang to Bukit Tinggi, is a large restaurant that was slightly damaged in the quake and now stands completely empty, its traditional curving roof and empty plate glass window the only reminders of its former use. The drivers set to work unlocking the doors of the truck, and then we started unloading its contents:

• Plastic sacks with three jerry cans a piece inside (at least jerry cans are light!)
• Rolls of blankets and sarongs
• Boxes full of sanitary napkins (also light!)
• Bundles of crowbars (very, very heavy)

With the drivers, we formed an ever-moving distribution line, receiving goods from the back of the truck and walking them into the restaurant/warehouse, to where the logistics and warehouse staff were stacking them neatly in the back. As I carried (the drivers kept warning me how heavy things were, as if I wasn’t already aware) I thought about the things I was carrying.

The jerry cans — for collecting and holding water, the most important thing there was. The blankets — I had already noticed, despite the heat of midday, rainy nights were chilly, especially if the rain was falling directly on you, if you had nowhere to get inside. Or if you were terrified of being inside.

The hoes, hammers, and crowbars — much better than bare hands for moving the fallen pieces of a house, and starting to put them back together.

The physical exertion felt good. After so much time spent in front of my computer or riding in a car to field sites up to four hours away, lifting and hauling reactivated me. It probably wasn’t the most useful thing I could have done in that hour, comparative advantages considered (the drivers were all very good at carrying things). But it did remind me why we are working so hard, in all our different ways of working.

Blog Post:  Posted October 12, 2009, 6:37 am by Glory Dwi Anjan...

The team behind the emergency response team

Country: Indonesia

Topics: Emergencies

This morning when I arrived at the office, I got a call from one of my team members, Hasdi — a Community Facilitator for our Community Development Programme here in Banda Aceh. He’s one of the members of Indonesia Response Team (IRT) in Padang, as a volunteer from our office. Immediately I was a bit worried, but he reassured me that everything was fine, just a little bit sleepless from the non-stop trips of assessment and distribution. He just missed us and wanted to hear the updates about our office.

“How’s work? Is everything fine?” he asked me with full concern. Then I said, “What work? We don’t have anything to do around here, so don’t worry!” Then we laughed heartily. I told him not to worry; I still have the other folks doing a great job and taking care of the work of those who have been deployed to Padang and surrounding areas for the emergency response. But it is, in fact, a busy time for us here: I am managing a team of 22 people for our two-year Community Development Programme here in Banda Aceh. We're at the peak of workload to be completed: it's the month when our quarterly report to donors needs to be submitted.

When the devastating earthquake hit Padang on September 30, 2009, I was on an airplane on the way back to Banda Aceh from a weeklong break for the Eid Ul Fitr holiday. Therefore, I know nothing about the deadly disaster — not until my sister called me from home to make sure I was fine. She was afraid that the earthquake has shaken Aceh as well.

The following day, instead of focusing on catching up on work after the holiday, I got a quick morning briefing from my supervisor about the steps we needed to take in response to the disaster. I was needed to make a quick decision, because four of my staff members are currently on the IRT and two of them are team leaders. So, I met both of the leaders and asked for their willingness to be deployed soon — of course, they did not hesitate at all.

Starting that day —the first day after the earthquake — we prepared our team for some of their colleagues being deployed. We talked about what we needed to do in order to keep delivering our programme in 40 villages across four sub-districts, as scheduled. We started preparing handover notes and appointing persons-in-charge.

Then came another day of decision: Tuesday, October 6, when Mercy Corps' Aceh Director told me that Padang needed as many team backup as possible. He planned to send all the IRT members in our office, plus some other folks who wanted to volunteer for the emergency response. That was the biggest pang for me: I needed to send five of our eight team members from our office to Padang the next day. It felt a little bit weird for me when that critical situation did happen, but we were ready. And it feels great that we could help in the emergency response by dedicating our team members there.

My conversation with Hasdi ended like this: “Okay, boss, I need to go now. We have a meeting."

Take care folks, we are supporting you! Keep up the spirit out there!

Blog Post:  Posted October 11, 2009, 6:36 am by Greg Casagrande

Delivering aid to Samoa's survivors

Country: Samoa

Topics: Emergencies, Economic Development, Displacement

It has been an unforgettable week. As a starter, let me share this photo of the formally picturesque village of Lalomanu where South Pacific Business Development (SPBD) once had 21 thriving micro-entrepreneurs. After the tsunami, Lalomanu is gone.

On Friday, we delivered aid packages to 102 stricken women in 15 different villages — including Lalomanu — across the southeast coast of Upolu in Samoa. They were all extremely delighted when we showed up at their various places of encampment.

We delivered these supplies to each lady:

• A 20-pound sack of rice
• 24 cans of fish
• A large bushknife
• A bucket in which they can store water for washing, cooking and bathing
• A wash basin
• Plates, cups and spoons
• 24 liters of water
• A box of mosquito coils
• Ten boxes of matches
• Four toothbrushes, three tubes of toothpaste and soap
• A grant for ST £90 (about £36)

In total, this aid package was worth ST £240 per person (about £96). That is more than the average monthly income for an underprivileged family in Samoa — and so these women were quite pleased when we arrived.

The village of Saleapaga, where SBPD worked with 14 successful micro-entrepreneurs, appears to be relocating and the government of Samoa appears to be supportive. While many of our ladies are living in quickly-assembled homes of loose pieces of timber, tarps and mats, the government is at work trying to extend power lines to the area. Hopefully — eventually — water and sanitation will also be brought to this area. For now, these families are very much out in the wilderness and so we are pleased to be able to lend a hand.

Earlier this week, there was another massive earthquake in the region — a 7.9-magnitude quake in Vanuatu. This led to a tsunami warning, which required the entire nation of Samoa to evacuate to higher ground. It was a fairly extraordinary experience watching (and participating in) the evacuation of the city of Apia. Fortunately, another tsunami did not show up but it did provide an opportunity to ensure that the tsunami alert system and the responses are appropriate.

On the unfortunate side, a few brave souls decided that this warning was the last straw and that they, too, have now decided to permanently move uphill into the bush.

On Saturday, SPBD carried out another large scale aid distribution. We visted another 13 villages that were severely impacted. Next week, we plan to start working with some of the more eager women to see if they are ready to start re-launching their micro businesses or re-building their homes. We are putting in place emergency financing packages for each of our ladies to help them do this.

Thank you to those have already donated so generously to support our efforts. That’s it for now. Tofa soifua.

Blog Post:  Posted October 10, 2009, 11:17 am by Malka Older

Lake Maninjau

Country: Indonesia

Topics: Emergencies, Displacement

About six months ago, after spending a week working with our Disaster Risk Reduction Programme in West Sumatra, I joined some friends in a trip to Bukit Tinggi, a town in the mountains above Padang that's popular with tourists. From there we drove to Lake Maninjau, a spectacularly beautiful crater lake set in a ring of sharp cliffs. From atop one of the bluffs we shot photos of the blue water and the mountains reflected in it, and then we drove down a series of hairpin curves to the town of Maninjau, filled with the quaint, traditional Padang houses.

Today I returned to Maninjau by another route, and with a very different purpose: assessing the needs of the people affected by the earthquake there. Even before we got to the shore of the lake, I could see the difference. The majestic cliffs around the lake, mostly green with vegetation, were now streaked with brown and dun, showing places where landslides had torn away from their sides.

We stopped at a small camp that had been set up for the people whose houses were too badly damaged to live in. Under a makeshift shelter children sat and a woman slept. Another tent — with a few desultory chairs under it and an old blackboard — had been set up as the school where, they told us, 118 students were supposed to learn. The original elementary school, across the street, had been completely destroyed. By the shore of the lake was the rumah adat —the traditional meeting house for the community — ornately carved in red and brown wood with the traditional sweeping roofs. One of its sides had been destroyed.

“There are twenty-three families here now,” the woman in the small registration office told us. “But there are more who were here and have gone home to their damaged houses to try to clean up. If it rains, they will come back here.”

The problem with rain was not getting wet. The problem with rain was the danger of further landslides.

Another few kilometers along the road from the camp we saw the impact of the landslides. Huge rivers of dried mud plunged down the mountain and into the lake. The road had only just been cleared for passage, and in one place a brave driver held downed powerlines up for our car to pass under.

Some houses had been buried almost to the roof in mud. Others had been swept away completely, leaving only the roofing sheets floating in the shallows of the lake. We passed mud slide after mud slide and, after circumnavigating the lake, headed home to begin planning a distribution of tool kits and household kits for the area's displaced families to start rebuilding.

Blog Post:  Posted October 9, 2009, 10:47 am by Elpido Soplantila

Lead them to a better future

Country: Indonesia

Topics: Emergencies, Economic Development, Displacement

I started my day with a cup of tea while reading a local newspaper, Padang Ekspres, this morning. The headline for today’s edition read “70 percent of the business economy is destroyed.”

The 7.6-magnitude earthquake has affected Indonesia's West Sumatra province in so many aspects. It's not only about ruined buildings or damaged houses; not only about deaths and missing people. Besides all those losses, the economy is also falling down.

So many hotels, schools, shopping centers, markets and even companies are destroyed. So many staff died. Even though most survived, it’s not easy for them to start again.

But the worst impact of this economic problem is the suffering and burden among earthquake-affected families.

Elok, a 51-year-old fish farmer from Ulakan village, lost the fish ponds that generated his family income.

Basril — father of three children — once ran a small business together with his wife in order to fulfill their daily needs, but now faces the reality that the earthquake has made his family’s life worse.

The news reports that West Sumatra really needs a lot of money to recover the economy. Mercy Corps is really eager to help affected families to start generating income again but, with the current funding sources, we realize how hard it will be to meet these overwhelming needs.

But we won’t stop now. So many needs are still out there. People need to survive.

“Beyond the immediate tragedy of this disaster, lies a longer term impact on the economy, which has been severely affected. While we are working on alleviating the suffering of people made homeless, we are also looking ahead to how we can help get the markets and supply chains functioning again — and make them more resilient so they will come back more quickly from future disasters”, explained Malka Older, Mercy Corps Indonesia's Programme Director, who leads the emergency response team on the ground.

Mercy Corps strongly believes that supporting people like Elok and Basril to start their livelihoods will lead all survivors to a better future.

Blog Post:  Posted October 9, 2009, 2:57 am by Tanty Pranawisanty

A happy moment amid the ruins

Country: Indonesia

Topics: Emergencies, Displacement, Children

I was busy overseeing the distribution of hygiene kits for 167 earthquake-affected households in Surantiah village when I was suddenly attracted by the sound of laughter from outside the hall where we were handing out supplies.

Three little children shared the joy and laughter of riding a rusty, dusty bicycle around. From their appearance, I guess they are around six or seven years old. I offered them candies that I always bring whenever I go to the field and, without hesitation, they took some with smiles on their faces. Soon after, I had a few wonderful moments taking their pictures as they rode the bike and laughing out loud when I showed them the previews on my digital camera.

When I asked what were they doing there, one of them — a boy named Rendra — said that they were there waiting for his mother, Ibu Yanti, who is a member of the Disaster Preparedness Team in this village. Mercy Corps — through a partnership with a local organisation, Kogami —has formed these teams in each sub-district and trained them for disaster preparedness. Ibu Yanti was in charge of arranging this distribution for her village.

The two girls playing with Rendra were also waiting for their mothers, who were in line to get hygiene kits. They are all neighbours in Surantiah and they all had the same story for me. Their houses and school were badly damaged by the quake. At the moment, they are out of school and still have no idea when they will be back to study and see the rest of their schoolmates.

But one thing's for sure: they really understand what has happened and, sadly, what might happen in the future when another disaster strikes. They have learned from Rendra’s mother and other Disaster Preparedness Team members what should they do if an earthquake happens again.

But today, they all seemed very happy playing with their rusty bike, the only belonging left from the earthquake. Deep inside, I do wish that they will always have happy moments like I saw today — and I hope their school will be rebuilt soon.