Many Indonesians would have survived a deadly earthquake last month if houses had been built out of bamboo and other flexible materials, says an architect on a mission to transform devastated villages.
Eko Prawoto, who is working with homeless survivors in Ngipikan, a village in an area hard-hit by the quake that rocked Central Java and Yogyakarta, blames poor construction techniques for the huge loss of life and injuries.
"Many people who died in this earthquake died because of the brick walls that fell on them," he said.
PHOTO: AFP
The 6.3-magnitude temblor killed 5,800 people, injured up to 40,000 people and destroyed or damaged almost 600,000 houses in the heavily-populated area, which like much of Indonesia faces a constant risk of serious earthquakes.
Many of the houses that were damaged or flattened were built of brick and concrete and featured little reinforcement to resist the shockwaves of the quake, Prawoto says.
A preliminary assessment by the government's Development Planning Agency (Bappenas) also blamed poor construction for the high injury and death toll.
A bookshop and some houses in Yogyakarta built after Prawoto's mostly timber designs survived the May 27 quake undamaged, were his first experiments in quake-resistant construction.
"It's a wooden structure -- which is elastic -- and absorbs shocks ... During an earthquake, you have pushing and pulling forces. Each junction should resist these kind of forces," he said.
In Java, as in much of Indonesia, residences made of bamboo and timber are generally looked down upon as poor people's housing, whereas concrete and brick are viewed as symbols of modernity and rising wealth, Prawoto said.
Nevertheless in the aftermath of the quake, many traumatized villagers now fear living or even sitting inside brick or concrete buildings.
"It's a traumatic experience for them," he said.
For Ngipikan, where almost all the houses were destroyed, Prawoto has designed houses for rebuilding that use traditional materials but have a modern twist: The lower half of the house walls are brick and the upper half bamboo, with coconut trees used for the structural posts.
"It's important to apply bamboo and timber in a different way so as to give the image of newness," he said.
"We use brick but only 1m high -- so in case an earthquake happens again, if it falls down then it's not so dangerous," he said.
Assisted by donations from the local daily Kompas, Prawoto has begun building four of a planned 65 houses. He hopes the houses will serve as a model for other residents looking to build cheap but strong new homes.
With free labor provided by villagers and using recycled timber from the collapsed houses in combination with low-cost bamboo, he estimates each house will cost 10 million rupiah (US$1,060).
The government has promised to pay 30 million rupiah to quake victims whose houses were destroyed, but Prawoto suspects such assistance will take months to be disbursed and people cannot wait that long.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
RSS