Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has met with survivors on the earthquake devastated island of Nias in western Sumatra and has urged residents to be patient. At least 500 people have been confirmed dead from Monday's quake which measured nearly 9 on the Richter scale and rescue workers continue to search for survivors trapped under rubble. The United Nation's World Food program estimates around 200-thousand Nias residents will need food for at least two months and aid efforts are now being temporarily diverted from Sumatra's tsunami devastated Aceh province. This latest natural disaster has again exposed the vulnerability of current building standards in the region.
Presenter/Interviewer: Claudette Werden Speakers: Tim Palmer, ABC Indonesia Correspondent; Norman Day, Professor of Architecture RMIT; Inge Nyraini; Bless Indonesia Today NGO
Palmer: Looking along the seafront of the town the whole place looks lopsided – as if it's simply been kicked over and some of it slanted down towards the sea – some of it pouring over the harbour walls, houses and buildings some pancaked and others just at a lopsided angle everywhere.
Werden: Indonesia correspondent Tim Palmer describing the earthquake ruined town of Gunung Sitoli on the island of Nias.
This latest natural disaster, coming just three months after the region's devastating tsunami has again focused attention on the type of housing best suited to the region's unpredictable seismic hazards.
Day: The stuff's built by a lot of labour its not built with much mechanism or without much control so things that get built generally speaking can tend to be pretty shoddy so the chances of them surviving are really pot luck rather than by design.
Werden: Australian professor of architecture Norman Day. He says traditional and western style building methods must be reconsidered in the wake of the recent volatile geological movements.
Day: With many of the those western buildings, the ones that survived had no basements, and they survived quite well, the ones that had basements, the water seemed to get into the basements and often those basements would be shopping malls, they're not carparks they're shopping malls or the spa areas of the hotels, the water would get in there and eddy around and it was such strong force, it sort of sucked the rest of the buildings into it, and others that were timber pole constructions, traditional settler housing with no great strength or engineering to them, they survived because water ran between the legs, if you like and on to the next site.
Werden: The Indonesian government is currently drafting a blueprint for future longterm housing development along the west coast of Sumatra. It incorporates the replanting of beachfront mangroves, a natural flooding buffer, which were cut down by illegal settlers to make way for shantytowns which were themselves destroyed by the tsunami.
The government is also proposing to resettle villagers further inland but Inge Nyraini, project manager with Bless Indonesia Today, an Indonesian non -government aid agency says locals are becoming impatient with the lack of progress and there's a danger the shantytowns will re-emerge.
Nyraini: When they just come and build it will be like a slum, it won't be any good and once they're building it maybe it will be difficult to ask them to move back. I mean the best way to handle the people is for the government to tell them not to build at that previous location but for the same time the government needs to do somehting about it, like doing surveying, or letting them know about their new location so they can start building in the right place rather than have people started building in the wrong place.
Werden: Are people building in the wrong place?
Nyraini: Some of the people, only a small number with the left over of the wood, but if the government didn't do quick action about it, it will soon be larger numer of people will start rebuilding.
Werden: Part of the problem is land ownership and lack of records identifying titles to land. Professor Day believes another environmental disaster is looming with the type of emergency housing being put up by donor countries.
Day: Emergency housing is a big big problem because within a year or two it becomes settler housing and a ghetto and no one wants to remove it and take it home, its too expensive so they just leave it there but the biggest problem is when they try to clad their buildings put roofs and walls on them with steel, its entirely inappropriate material for the tropics. The tropics needs walls that breathe and we've had experience with it in East Timor and Vietnam its just a totally inappropriate material.
Werden: Australian company Bluescope Steel says the 1500 steel homes its building in Aceh can be used as temporary and longterm housing. A company spokesperson says the structures have been designed and developed with local requirements in mind.
But Professor Day says other solutions for emergency and long term housing in the tropics haven't been considered.
Day: Often that's because aid is pegged to international gift giving so a nation who is wealthy and rich and has a very big steel industry is quite happy to donate those sort of products to these areas but they haven't really considered whether its in the long term interest of these areas.