[Kabar-indonesia] Foul-Smelling Sludge Spreads in Sidoarjo as 3,815 Displaced [+Merapi; Quake]

[JoyoNews at aol.com]

3 JP reports (+NYT): 

- Displaced Sidoarjo residents bide their time 
  as sludge spreads 

- Rain might trigger Merapi mudslides 

- French volunteers leave quake zone 

- NYT: 8 Months After Quake, Little Relief 
  for Some Pakistanis 

The Jakarta Post
Thursday, June 22, 2006

Displaced Sidoarjo residents bide their time as sludge spreads 

Indra Harsaputra and ID Nugroho, 
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta, Sidoarjo

On Tuesday, Vice President Jusuf Kalla offered soothing words to local 
residents displaced by a huge industrial accident that has spewed tons of 
foul-smelling mud into their homes.

Those responsible, he said, would be made to provide compensation at whatever 
price necessary. 

A day later, housewife Butin was still cooped up with thousands of others in 
a traditional market hastily converted into an evacuee center. 

"We don't need sweet promises," the 45-year-old said as she cradled her 
nine-month-old son in Pasar Baru Porong market. 

"We just want to be able to return home as soon as possible so we can back to 
work. If there's financial assistance, we haven't got it yet." 

Her family, along with about 3,800 other people, has holed up in the newly 
built market since the accident at the gas well of PT Lapindo Brantas Inc. on 
May 29. Mudflow from the site has yet to be halted. 

On Wednesday, her husband returned to their home in Siring village to see if 
the 20-cm-high sludge had subsided. He has been unable to work selling 
traditional snacks. 

"My baby can't have his milk because my husband has not been able to do his 
rounds selling snacks," she told The Jakarta Post. 

Siring community leader Nazarudin also said residents were anxious to leave 
the shelters and get back to their homes. 

The number of villagers abandoning their homes to stay in shelters, also 
including government offices and houses of worship, reached 3,815 as of Wednesday, 
including 298 under-fives. 

More may be forced to leave their homes soon, after a two-meter-high dam 
encircling Kedungbendo village was damaged Wednesday morning. At least six 
hectares of rice fields and 100 homes were inundated by the mud. 

The head of Sidoarjo regency Social Welfare Office, Hisjam Rosidy, said 
officials were working with Lapindo to determine the amount of compensation for the 
residents, although a daily allowance was provided. 

"Today, some residents have received Rp 20,000 (less than US$2) per person. 
We're still discussing the amount of compensation for houses or rice fields." 

In a meeting Wednesday with representatives from 15 companies whose 
operations have been halted by the accident, Lapindo agreed to provide Rp 1.4 million 
in compensation for each of the 1,879 workers temporarily laid off. The amount 
was based on the minimum wage of Rp 682,000 per month in the regency. 

Sidoarjo Manpower Office head Bambang S. Widagdo said the company would pay 
the compensation within the next two months. 

"I've asked the 15 companies which could not operate due to the mudflow to 
provide data on the number of their workers so they can start receiving the 
money." 

However, Lapindo representative Partogi said the company would immediately 
pay the compensation. 

Representatives of the companies were dissatisfied. 

The human resources manager of PT Primarindo Pangan Makmur, Agung Budianto, 
said his company spent an average of Rp 111 million each month to pay its 63 
workers. 

"Now they get only Rp 88 million for two months," he said, saying Lapindo 
should compensate the workers based on their take-home pay. 

Coordinating Minister for the People's Welfare Aburizal Bakrie, whose family 
is the main shareholder in Lapindo, said he would not visit the accident site 
because of his other commitments and it was not under his ministerial 
capacity. 

"Besides, it's being handled by Bakrie," he said, referring to his brother 
Nirwan. 

He said Lapindo must take responsibility for all the damage caused, including 
the relocation of residents. 

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The Jakarta Post
Thursday, June 22, 2006

Rain might trigger Merapi mudslides 

Slamet Susanto, The Jakarta Post, Sleman

Mt. Merapi sent avalanches of hot gas and debris down its scorched slopes 
Wednesday, as a scientist warned the peak's fragile lava dome still posed a 
threat to thousands of villagers.

The smoldering volcano has been at a near-continuous state of high alert for 
seven weeks, forcing the evacuation of thousands of villagers in a government 
designated danger zone. 

More than half a dozen avalanches Wednesday morning carried gas and volcanic 
debris 3.5 kilometers down the peak's flanks, Subandrio, head of the Mt. 
Merapi section at a Yogyakarta-based volcanology center, told AP on Wednesday. 

Magma has swelled into a volatile 300,000 cubic meter dome on the southern 
crater, he said, and there is a likelihood that the lava dome will collapse, 
causing an avalanche of the hot gas and volcanic debris trapped within it. 

The government has ordered the evacuation of all residents living within 
seven kilometers of the peak, but says it cannot force them to leave or prevent 
villagers from returning to check their houses and crops. Hundreds have refused 
to go. 

Searing gas clouds from the volcano killed two men as they hid in a bunker in 
the Kaliadem tourist area when hot gas traveled seven kilometers down the 
mountain last Wednesday. Similar clouds killed more than 60 villagers in 1994, 
and more than 1,300 people died in a major eruption in 1930. 

Another possible threat is posed by the rain forecast for coming days, which 
could wash millions of metric tons of built-up ash and rock fragments down 
Merapi's slopes in powerful mudslides. 

Thousands of houses in three hamlets in Cangkringan district in Sleman could 
be threatened by the mudslides of cold lava, coming from some three million 
cubic meters of volcanic debris piling up near the Kaliadem tourist area and 
along riverbanks. 

"In Kaliadem, there are more than three million cubic meters of volcanic 
materials. If it rains, they might turn into cold lava that could flow down into 
thousands of houses below," Sleman Regent Ibnu Subiyanto said Wednesday. 

He said the regency administration had no specific strategy for dealing with 
the danger. 

"One of the ways to block the cold lava is by digging trenches near the 
Gendol area to accommodate the lava and prevent it from reaching residential 
areas," Ibnu said. 

He said the administration had several months before the rainy season set in. 

The administration plans to involve the volcanology center in Yogyakarta, the 
central government and related experts in coming up with preventive measures 
to deal with the possible flow of cold lava, he said. 

The deaths of the two men in Kaliadem and the threat of mudslides have nearby 
villagers concerned they will be ordered out of the area. 

"If there is such a plan, I believe residents will oppose it. Residents are 
very worried they will be told to relocate because of the danger to their 
villages," Umbulharjo village head Bejomulyo said. 

He said many residents in the area earned a living from tourists. "If they 
are forced to relocate, they might have problems earning a living in the new 
places." 

A Kinahrejo resident, Wagiran, 52, urged the authorities only to close the 
affected tourist areas, not the villages on the volcano's slopes. "Don't move 
the villagers. We were born here and earn our living here," he said. 

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The Jakarta Post
Thursday, June 22, 2006

French volunteers leave quake zone 

YOGYAKARTA: Twenty French volunteers have headed home after assisting quake 
survivors for the past 10 days in the worst-hit region, Bantul.

The group included medical workers and technicians, and was led by Jean 
Jacques Buttiker. They provided medical treatment to the victims as well as 
cleaning up debris. The volunteers donated cash assistance worth 1,000 euros 
(US$1,200), plus $200 to help victims purchase building materials to reconstruct their 
houses. 

The National Disaster Management and Refugee Coordination Board deputy, Brig. 
Gen. Pramono Edi Wibowo, expressed his gratitude for the French volunteers' 
assistance Wednesday while sending them off at Adisucipto airport. "We can't do 
much in return but say thanks," he told Antara. 

Buttiker said the volunteers came to assist the quake victims and ease their 
problems, and the survivors greeted them with smiles. -- JP 

-----------------------------------------

The New York Times
June 21, 2006

8 Months After Quake, Little Relief for Some Pakistanis 

By CARLOTTA GALL

MUZAFFARABAD, Pakistan — Safina Bibi stood amid the ruins of her home, wiping 
the sweat from her face. "The way things are in our city, it is very 
difficult," she said. "They have not even cleared the rubble from the streets."

More than eight months after Pakistan's worst-ever earthquake killed 73,000 
people and left three million homeless, families here still swelter in tents 
waiting for a government compensation plan to kick in so they can start to 
rebuild. They are being told to leave their camps and return to their villages. But 
with no money, not many can reconstruct their homes.

"Officials are trying to close down the camps, but we tell them where else 
can we go?" Safina Bibi said. She said she was not sure the government 
compensation would ever come through. 

The government, and the army in particular, have been praised by aid 
officials and even the earthquake victims themselves for their management of the main 
relief effort immediately after the Oct. 8 quake. Pakistan successfully 
averted widespread hunger and disease and sheltered tens of thousands who were left 
homeless just before winter. 

"The army did well, there is no doubt," said Sardar Sikandar Hayat Khan, the 
prime minister of Pakistani Kashmir, who worked out of a tent for months until 
his offices were made safe. A recent report by the United Nations and the 
Pakistani government also concluded that the relief effort was "one of the best 
examples of civil military cooperation in a post-natural-disaster setting."

Yet if the emergency relief stage is over, reconstruction has barely begun. 
There was little sign of it on a recent visit to this city, the capital of 
Pakistani-administered Kashmir, where a few street cleaners were out clearing 
debris from the earthquake. 

Families are still living in clusters of tents in parks and open spaces in 
the suffocating summer heat. They said they were dreading the monsoon rains, 
which come in July.

Since it successfully managed the relief effort, the army has passed the job 
of reconstruction to the local and federal civilian governments. It is being 
led by the Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Authority, under a 
civilian leader. 

The reconstruction plan, which was drafted with help from international donor 
countries, relies on the private sector, and intends to pay cash compensation 
to families to help them rebuild their homes. The government will pay about 
$3,000 to every family that lost its home, and about $1,300 to families whose 
homes were damaged, said Muhammad Waqas Hanif, deputy director of the 
reconstruction authority. 

The allotments — totaling some $2 billion — should each cover 75 percent of 
the cost of building a simple 400-square-foot house. Since March, about 
two-thirds of the 300,000 people who were living in the camps have begun to return 
home.

Yet the summer building period is rapidly slipping away, and many people are 
still without money. They will not be able to start building before the 
monsoon comes, when heavy rains are expected to destabilize many of the hillsides 
even further, wash out roads and make most construction work impossible.

Despite the delays, Jan Vandemoortele, head of the United Nations mission in 
Pakistan, praised the plan for its owner-driven rebuilding through cash 
compensation. 

"We believe it is the right way, but it is not easy," he said. "It needs due 
process and assessments, some elements of control, so there are unavoidable 
delays." 

Mr. Vandemoortele noted that government-led rebuilding plans had proved slow 
and inefficient in several countries dealing with the destruction from the 
South Asian tsunami that struck in December 2004. 

The government has made rural homes the priority. Only later, he said, would 
it focus on the 120,000 urban homes destroyed, the resettlement of 18 villages 
declared unsafe and the rebuilding of public buildings, hospitals and 8,000 
schools. In the meantime there is a stopgap plan to put up 5,000 temporary 
homes for urban families for the winter.

The money being paid out may not be much for middle-class city dwellers, but 
it should help the poorest and most vulnerable families, who so often fall 
through the cracks of relief operations, Mr. Vandemoortele said. 

The money will be paid out in installments as houses are assessed and 
rebuilding is monitored. Teams of government officials and military engineers have 
been surveying the 460,000 destroyed rural houses since April and are expected 
to have the task completed by the end of this month. 

[In a telephone interview on June 20, Mr. Hanif, the deputy director of the 
reconstruction authority, said the first cash disbursements had already gone 
out to 200,000 homeowners.]

But for those families stranded in towns and tents, the mood is one of 
sinking depression. 

Food aid for people living in the tent camps has been cut and the cash 
replacement has not come through, families said. On the university grounds, where 50 
families camped through the winter, 20 families remain with nowhere to go and 
no relief in sight.

Faiz Muhammad, 57, a jobless laborer and the father of six, lives in one 
tent. The family was living in a rented space before the earthquake hit and, as a 
result, will not qualify for compensation, he said. 

All he was counting on now was a cash payment that should replace the food 
aid, which he said stopped in March. "We don't have any plan," he said. "We are 
sitting here and counting on God." 

For Shahnaz, 35, a mother of four in the next tent, life is even more bleak. 
Her husband was paralyzed when their house collapsed on him in the earthquake 
and broke his back. He has since lost his job as a school clerk. 

In recent weeks, officials declared their village uninhabitable. All its 
former residents are scattered in tents through the city waiting for the 
government to decide where to relocate them.

"I am very worried because we don't have enough for our living expenses and I 
have young daughters to feed," she said. "We are only surviving on money from 
relatives and what people are giving us."

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Joyo Indonesia News Service
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