spruiked: jakarta style

Landslide-prone areas in Central Java have risen from 97 to 135 districts due to uncontrolled land conversion and forest encroachment

501 villages in Central Java are "land-slide prone". What that means is that there is a danger of people being killed or injured if there is an earthquake or heavy rain. Landslides were the biggest single killer in the Padang earthquake last month.

Landslides are caused by over-developing unstable land, or clearing trees from slopes. As Indonesia's population grows, its towns expand into areas which, quite frankly, shouldn't be developed.

Remember, earthquakes don't kill people. People kill people by building shoddy structures and by building on unstable land.

[Padang] alone was estimated to have suffered losses of Rp 6.5 trillion... 110,000 houses in Padang were damaged, about 40,000 of them severely... [T]he earthquake had also destroyed 1,188 classrooms in the city

West Sumatra is screwed. The cost of the damage caused by the earthquake is estimated to be in the vicinity of $13 billion or Rp 13,000,000,000,000. That's a lot of zeros. And let's not forget that 50% of Padang was destroyed only two years ago in another earthquake. And another three years before that...

Can anyone see a pattern forming? Or are people in charge really, really, really stupid? A couple of weeks ago, I cynically suggested that Padang is no longer commercially viable. Do you see what I mean? How can Indonesia deal properly with issues of corruption, poverty, pollution, education --- pretty much anything at all --- if every couple of years this happens?

Yesterday's 6.4 RS trembler here in Jakarta was another reminder that this is going to happen again. We are having earthquakes on a daily basis now. It's time for the powers that be to actually DO something and protect the people that cannot protect themselves.

Earthquake proofing is no longer an option.

as usual the poor are always the victims. And most of the rich are too busy jet setting or partying to care what happens to the poor

A bit harsh? Not really.

Public facilities such as malls, hospitals and schools built in Padang are supposed to be able to withstand magnitude-eight earthquakes

According to West Sumatra's governor, no schools, shopping malls or mosques should have collapsed in the earthquake.

Magnitude-eight earthquakes are ten times stronger than magnitude-seven.  I bet there isn't a single building in Padang that would withstand a magnitude-eight earthquake.

Now that the general elections are over, they see no benefit in sending aid or volunteers to assist the victims of the Padang quake... [Party aid would come again] probably around a year before the 2014 elections

The Jakarta Post menunjukkan hipokrasi buruk Golkar dan partai politik yang lain. Ingat Golkar. Situasi berbeda sekali dari Situ Gintung sebelum Pemilu.

I have been going on and on about how the government needs to think carefully about how it rebuilds Padang. One of the simplest measures it can take is to stop using brick. Here's proof of how wooden structures withstand earthquakes. This one looks like it has survived several earthquakes already and now provides shelter in the ruin of the city.

The Big Picture has a photo essay -- 40 photos -- of the devastation in Padang and neighbouring Pariaman. Warning: some are very disturbing.

most of the buildings that were reconstructed two years ago have collapsed

Two years ago, 50% of Padang's buildings were destroyed or damaged to the point that they were unusable. Skip forward to now and that figure has jumped to 85% of the city's buildings.

The authorities have guesstimated that the damage to Padang (not including Pariaman) comes to $62 million. This is a gross under-estimate. The total value of damages in the 2007 earthquake was estimated to be around $160 million. Simple maths would suggest that the people of Padang are looking at a $250-300 million repair bill.

It seems blatently obvious that rushing to rebuild Padang is a mistake. Yet the Vice President has promised that homes will be rebuilt within six months. Rebuilt to collapse again in 12-18 months?

For obvious reasons, the Vice President, Padang's mayor and West Sumatra's deputy governor all appear to have priortized getting Padang back on its feet, without thinking about how best to do this. The experts are ignored and Padang will be rebuilt just to come tumbling down again.

West Sumatra officials are worried that the earthquake will have a negative impact on tourism, which contributes 17% to the regional economy. They are right to be worried.

Photographs like the one above have a huge impact on tourism -- and not in a good way. To me, it says really poor construction - don't go there. This might sound unfair or cowardly, but it is patently obvious to me that those in authority don't care much about the people of Padang. If they did, the city would have better withstood the earthquake.

So go ahead and clean up the city. But don't count on the tourists coming back. Not unless the authorities get serious about earthquake planning.

Experts have called on the government to invest in quake-resistant buildings and widen Padang’s roads — predicting an exodus of about 500,000 people in the event of a major quake. But little has been done.

There's this "thing" in the TwIndoVerse going around right now. Don't point the finger. Stop blaming people for the disaster in Padang. I have a problem with that because there are clearly a LOT of people to blame:

* the local and central governments who have ignored the experts' warnings about the earthquake risk since 2004

* the developers and builders for the shoddy structures they built, collapsing like a souffle

* the people of Indonesia, if we let this happen again.

Contrary to public belief, people do not have to die in an earthquake. We let them die. If we do not make this pathetic excuse of a government take responsibility for their corruption and ineptitude, then when the next one hits --- and it will --- we only have ourselves to blame.