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.
DIALOGUE: US president-elect Donald Trump on his Truth Social platform confirmed that he had spoken with Xi, saying ‘the call was a very good one’ for the US and China US president-elect Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) discussed Taiwan, trade, fentanyl and TikTok in a phone call on Friday, just days before Trump heads back to the White House with vows to impose tariffs and other measures on the US’ biggest rival. Despite that, Xi congratulated Trump on his second term and pushed for improved ties, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said. The call came the same day that the US Supreme Court backed a law banning TikTok unless it is sold by its China-based parent company. “We both attach great importance to interaction, hope for
‘GREAT OPPRTUNITY’: The Paraguayan president made the remarks following Donald Trump’s tapping of several figures with deep Latin America expertise for his Cabinet Paraguay President Santiago Pena called US president-elect Donald Trump’s incoming foreign policy team a “dream come true” as his nation stands to become more relevant in the next US administration. “It’s a great opportunity for us to advance very, very fast in the bilateral agenda on trade, security, rule of law and make Paraguay a much closer ally” to the US, Pena said in an interview in Washington ahead of Trump’s inauguration today. “One of the biggest challenges for Paraguay was that image of an island surrounded by land, a country that was isolated and not many people know about it,”
‘FIGHT TO THE END’: Attacking a court is ‘unprecedented’ in South Korea and those involved would likely face jail time, a South Korean political pundit said Supporters of impeached South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol yesterday stormed a Seoul court after a judge extended the impeached leader’s detention over his ill-fated attempt to impose martial law. Tens of thousands of people had gathered outside the Seoul Western District Court on Saturday in a show of support for Yoon, who became South Korea’s first sitting head of state to be arrested in a dawn raid last week. After the court extended his detention on Saturday, the president’s supporters smashed windows and doors as they rushed inside the building. Hundreds of police officers charged into the court, arresting dozens and denouncing an
CYBERSCAM: Anne, an interior decorator with mental health problems, spent a year and a half believing she was communicating with Brad Pitt and lost US$855,259 A French woman who revealed on TV how she had lost her life savings to scammers posing as Brad Pitt has faced a wave of online harassment and mockery, leading the interview to be withdrawn on Tuesday. The woman, named as Anne, told the Seven to Eight program on the TF1 channel how she had believed she was in a romantic relationship with the Hollywood star, leading her to divorce her husband and transfer 830,000 euros (US$855,259). The scammers used fake social media and WhatsApp accounts, as well as artificial intelligence image-creating technology to send Anne selfies and other messages
RSS