Another disaster struck Indonesia. The latest, a 7.3 RS earthquake, jolted districts in West Java and one in Central Java. UN-OCHA reported 31,778 houses were severely damaged and 22,453 were moderately damaged in 12 districts in West Java and one district in Central Java. And as WHO Emergency Situation Report released yesterday, public buildings were severely affected as well. 377 schools, 605 religious buildings, 26 office buildings, and 202 health facilities were damaged. WHO also reported 80 dead, 370 suffered from major injuries, 27 missing, and 1,098 people with minor injuries. In total, 157,432 people become IDPs as a result of the September 2, 2009 disaster.
Just in 24 hours, several NGOs and UN agencies flocked to Garut, Ciamis, and Tasikmalaya which area heavily affected the earthquake. The NGOs which deployed their emergency response team and conducted assessment some of them can be described here were Catholic Relief Services, YTBI, Habitat for Humanity, ASB, ECHO, YEU, Oxfam, World Vision, Hope Worldwide, Save the Children, Palang Merah Indonesia, Church World Services, Plan International and Oxfam.
Until today there is no information regarding the exact number on how many building of those were damaged will be rehabilitated or rebuild. Government estimated the cost will amount to between IDR 1.4 trillion and 1.5 trillion. And the reconstruction expected to be completed by the end of February 2010. It can be predicted that there will be a massive rehabilitation work during these 5 months. Based on the experiences from reconstruction or rehabilitation of Aceh Tsunami 2004 and Yogyakarta Earthquake 2006, there are at least 4 prominent ideas should be considered on the rehabilitation works.
Beneficiaries’ participation
Based on the lessons learned from the Tsunami Response (2004-2008) and from Yogyakarta Earthquake (2006) shows beneficiaries and communities participation is the most important component in the program success. Yogyakarta shows huge difference in beneficiaries participation compare to Aceh which lead to the faster result and less cost of reconstruction. This participation brought to a stronger ownership and responsibility. Admittedly there are wide spectrums of participations. The fullest extent is they provide construction material and skilled labors for the rehabilitation of their houses or community infrastructure. On the lowest, they can guard the material or provide access when the construction materials come to their area. The participation can be anything but it should be there. All intervention by NGOs should complemented by their sweat equity. This is the only way if we want to develop mutual respect, synergies and long term cooperation. At the end of the day the communities will be able not only survive when other disaster strike again but have the skills to help other communities surrounding them.
Engineering structural safety
If it comes to safety, all rehabilitation work should apply the engineering concept on structural safety. This becomes more important on the earthquake disaster prone area. Catastrophic failure happens on houses, clinics, schools and other infrastructure buildings which built not follow the engineering code. As per engineering concept, structural elements can be design as ductile elements which absorb earthquake energy. If the earthquake load big enough but within its specified loading code, the elements may be broken but no sudden collapse will happen. In every earthquake shows that buildings without proper engineering design and construction, the structural behave as a brittle material and collapse without any warning to people inside the building to escape.
Local resource
There is no one size fits all intervention by NGO. We can not easily replicate the solution from one area to the other. If we want to rehabilitate or reconstruct housing or other infrastructure we can not just go copying the previous intervention in other area. Each disaster area has its own uniqueness. One of the uniqueness is the local resource. We have to consider skilled builders, construction material, common technology and equipment available on the site. On the structural safety side there is no compromise, it should be followed strictly but for using local resource we have to be innovative. We have to use what is available on site as much as we can otherwise local resource can be idle. We have to balance the appropriateness on engineering and its cost with the local resource availability. These affects to the decision on the engineering side which lead to materials to be used and builders who will works. If we use bigger component from outside the area it will reduce their participation. In this case NGO intervention will be partner in reconstruction to train, supervise and provide management in reconstruction.
Sustainability
The sad part of Aceh's reconstruction is there is no significant and longer-term effect on local economic growth. World Bank reported on Aceh Economic Update in May 2009 that Aceh’s non-oil and gas gross domestic product growth had dropped to 1.9 percent in 2008, far below the national figure of 6.5 percent. When NGOs started their reconstruction works in 2005 the non-oil and gas GDP was 1.2%. Then during the heyday of reconstruction and rehabilitation in 2006 and 2007, the GDP became 7.7% and 7.0%, respectively. But when NGOs phased out in 2008, the GDP plummeted to 1.9%. There are several issues, such as security issues, which made the 7.77 billion USD funding committed for the reconstruction of Aceh and Nias have very minimum impact on sustainability in local economic growth.
To minimize such problems, NGOs have to leave the competition by waving flags and moving forward to form a solid group. This group should produce pressure on every party, which can impede all rehabilitation and reconstruction efforts. The obstruction can be security issues, or improper business practices since a massive reconstruction effort may attract everyone seeks for opportunity and, to some extent, very demanding beneficiaries.
These four ideas mentioned above should be considered before any work on rehabilitation commences. Without these, the rehabilitation effort will be difficult to have a long-term impact and be sustainable.
Arwin Soelaksono - Disaster Response & reConstruction
