Yogya Menangis - Student experiences of the earthquake

By Rebecca Duffy s22
University of Queensland
See photos of the earthquake

For several weeks our attention had been focused on heightened volcanic activity at Mount Merapi, 25 km north of Yogyakarta. The last thing we expected was an earthquake that would take 6000 lives and devastate tens of thousands of homes to the south.

Now, taking any southerly or south-easterly road from the city reveals kilometre after kilometre of rubble; piles of bricks and wooden frames that were previously houses. Children line all the main roads leading from the city – plastic disposable cups or cardboard boxes accept donations from the aid vehicles that have been for days filing continuously back and forth from Yogyakarta.

The media pictures of flattened homes beamed through worldwide television networks partly convey the story. But on the ground, those images are virtually unbroken from the outskirts of the city to more remote villages. A few homes remain standing, but most are completely unliveable – structurally unsound and sodden throughout following recent rains. They will have to be demolished.

Early last Saturday morning, the 27th of May, I was woken by a long deep rumble and shaking bedroom. My first thought was “Merapi”. My northern city suburb neighbours rushed out onto the street, shaken, confused, and trying to see if the mountain had erupted. However the plume of smoke and ash rising from the volcano didn’t appear to match the intensity of what we had experienced.

With images of Aceh so fresh in the minds of all Indonesians, it is perhaps unsurprising that cries of “tsunami!” were taken up an hour later. Although Yogyakarta is too far from the coast to be at risk of tsunami, trucks full of wounded people were within hours fleeing from the south towards the mountain, fearing a second wave of destruction. The panic caught on and the main streets heading north became congested with cars, trucks and motorcycles. Eventually police vehicles with load-speakers helped spread the message that there was in fact no tsunami, and a kind of order returned.

But it soon became apparent that areas south of the city were seriously damaged. Information slowly filtered in throughout the day. Every hospital quickly filled to overflowing and it was clear a major disaster had occurred. Existing groups and networks began to mobilise – those with first aid or medical skills went straight out with medical teams and local rescue workers to do what they could.

At first I, and many others, felt completely helpless. No skills, no transport. But people had already started doing whatever they could think of – giving blood at the hospitals, and distributing water to some of the hundreds of people in hospital car parks waiting hours for medical attention.

On the second day, people brought packages of cooked rice to some of the wounded and their families who had already waited more than a day outside hospitals. The few stores that were open were packed with shoppers, and stock was quickly depleted. Only some of the shoppers were relief volunteers – many residents feared further earthquakes, and were stocking up on supplies. However, the mobilisation of existing groups and networks had already begun in earnest, with initial efforts getting desperately needed medics and medical supplies, as well as basic food or shelter items, out to affected areas.

By Monday, an awesome array of spontaneous relief efforts had sprung up on nearly every street. All mosques, church groups, existing community organisations, and scores of small informal university or other community networks were acting. Thousands of small groups of people pooled their resources to donate, collect and buy supplies and get them out to affected areas in any and all ways possible. Vehicles of all descriptions plied the routes out of the city, funnelling out supplies of medicine, food and shelter.

Despite this massive effort, the overwhelming scale of the disaster was now becoming apparent. The further out we went, the less aid anyone had received – many had received none at all and distribution to the most needy was clearly inadequate. Even by the fourth day, the only aid reaching some marginal villages was all the result of spontaneous community efforts. Achieving a balance between efficiency in distribution and fair distribution was a challenge.

There was a need to negotiate existing community structures which tended to centralise the supplies. Many aid workers commented that insistence on following poorly organised bureaucratic structures from local government levels through to village heads was the reason that government aid was so slow to reach the outer areas – if it reached at all. Community efforts managed to bypass some of these structures, thereby delivering aid quickly and directly to the most remote villages and families.

Naturally though, the sheer number of separate individual relief efforts and a lack of coordination made some of the work less effective. People with little or no previous experience in such work were doing whatever they thought was useful, even if other efforts might have been more strategic. On the other hand, it is difficult to see how these groups could have been more effective at doing so much so quickly, given the scale of demand. Tens of thousands of people all needed urgent help. It seems unlikely that any centralised effort could have been as effective as a grassroots response at mobilising in so many different locations at the same time; with different specialisations and destinations; and in a situation that was rapidly changing. Indeed, with government aid still not reaching many communities, it has often been the only useful response.

It was awesome to see ordinary people acting so incredibly quickly in direct response to what they were seeing. Our group, a collection of students participating in the ACICIS program, were able to quickly gather cash donations from friends and family, and funnel this directly back out to villages that that not yet received help, in the form of medical supplies, food and shelter materials. ACICIS students also accompanied teams of foreign medics and media, helping with translation.

At the same time, existing local groups with good structures and organisational skills, as well as local knowledge and effective networks, were already cooperating with medics and groups like Medecins Sans Frontiers to bridge the gap before a larger “official” aid deployment could begin.

Nightly meetings began to coordinate efforts between the larger aid organisations arriving in Yogyakarta and some local partner organisations with necessary local knowledge and capacities such as WALHI (Indonesian Forum for the Environment). A visit to the WALHI office showed a massive effort involving more than 100 volunteers. They were not only cooperating with the aid efforts of larger organisations but also coordinating the efforts of their wider local networks and smaller member groups working in the field, who were continuously feeding back new information. Medium and longer-term plans were already being mapped out, while emergency relief continued at a rapid pace and became increasingly effective and strategic.

On reflection, I am struck by the way so many in the community have responded so quickly and worked so hard. It’s Saturday morning as I write, and though it’s only been a week since the quake it feels like much longer. Most temporary groups are winding down their efforts and, unfortunately, us university students must now write end of semester assignments and sit exams!

Though the recovery effort is likely to be complicated and difficult, I am inspired by the ways some of the permanent groups are thinking about medium and long term efforts. For example, friends at WALHI and the Centre for Peace and Security Studies (CSPS) at UGM note that in situations like this, local people often lose their voice. These groups intend to work to ensure that local people are put at the centre of decision making. They hope to advocate on behalf of earthquake victims to lessen some of the common problems associated with post-emergency aid, such as dependency, debt, conflict and ineffective distribution.

This week, when efforts were so rushed, it was hard to take the time to listen to people, or to address the difficulties that inevitably come with relief work. Hopefully longerterm efforts will build upon the influence of groups such as WALHI and CSPS and the spirit of the spontaneous community response – a response that proved very effective in the early days after the earthquake – to do just the opposite.