April 2009 - To mark the commemoration of Earth Day this month, we checked in with our friends on the other side of the world at SurfAid International who are lending humanitarian aid to communities affected by natural disasters. Below, Kirk Willcox shares with us his experience with earthquakes in West Sumatra and the importance of being prepared for anything Mother Nature throws his way.

Living in Padang, West Sumatra, the gateway to the Mentawai, I knew it was only a matter of time before experiencing an earthquake.

It was 6:10 p.m. Wednesday night 12 September 2007, just before nightfall, when the SurfAid office started shaking and a staff member called out: “Gempa, gempa.” Earthquake! Earthquake! Staff were straight out the door but I continued working, not realising the thing was going to rev up in intensity. When my desk started tilting from side to side I was soon bolting through the front door with the framework shifting a foot each side.

On the street, we watched mesmerised as the bitumen road twisted and rippled like a demented snake; parked cars swayed side to side as though drunken yobbos had hold of them, and the powerlines swooshed overhead. All your senses were heightened. The electricity went down and it was soon dark.

Reports came from around town that buildings had collapsed, and one bloke was killed not far from our office. At 8.4 on the Richter scale, it was the biggest earthquake in the world in 2007.

The following morning, at 7:10 a.m., another earthquake struck, a 7.9. While not as big as the first one, the epicentre was closer to Padang and the Mentawai, and in shallower water, so it felt much stronger. Women and children in total fear were huddled together on the ground outside my house and I had adrenaline rushes through my chest for 30 minutes.

One hundred and fifty kilometres to the west, the Mentawai people were hit hard. Three people were killed and 591 injured. Houses, schools, offices and places of worship were destroyed - 3,709 houses alone were severely damaged.

After the first quake, many villagers ran up the hills, fearing a tsunami. It was raining and they were in the mud and darkness, without shelter. SurfAid and the local government estimated 25,000 - 30,000 people stayed on the hills that night, fearing another earthquake and tsunami. Many stayed up there for months, only venturing into their villages by day, as the aftershocks continued.

John McGroder was on his boat, the Barrenjoey, near Thunders, in the southern part of the Mentawai, when the second quake hit in the morning. He wrote in his daily logbook: “I am aboard my dinghy and watch local huts rock from side to side at about 45 degree angles. All trees shaking in unison as with last night’s quake. Surfers in the water feel the quake through their boards which are bouncing violently. Locals tell my crew they are scared because the rumbling came from below the island and it sounded like something trying to come out of the earth.”

The Mentawai Islands, and Nias, sit on one of the most radical earthquake zones in the world where the Indo-Australian and Eurasian tectonic plates meet. The Indo-Australian plate is moving north-east and sliding underneath the Eurasian plate. This builds up enormous pressure between the plates and it finally ruptures about every 200 years, with one plate abruptly slipping underneath the other and thrusting upwards.

This is what caused the great 9.3 Richter-scale earthquake and tsunami of December 2004, with the rupture being 1,100km in length, and the March 2005 Nias 8.7 earthquake.

One of the main experts in this region is Professor Kerry Sieh, formerly with the Californian Institute of Technology and now the founding director of the Earth Observatory of Singapore.  His research shows that offshore of Aceh the amount of slip during the 2004 rupture was up to 25 metres, and as high as 12 metres under Nias Island in 2005.  The massive underwater upheavals lift coral reefs out of the water and can cause tsunamis.

“A far greater threat to Sumatra now is rupture of the megathrust further south,” Sieh says. “The Mentawai section of the Sunda megathrust remains unruptured and threatens to produce another giant earthquake with the next few decades ... data show this section of the megathrust has been locked since its most recent earthquakes in 1797 and 1833.”

Sieh and his team have GPS stations throughout the region whereby they can monitor movement of the mainland and the islands. The first earthquake in September 2007 moved the southernmost Mentawai island, Pagai Selatan, southwest 1.2 metres towards the Indian Ocean, with a downward drop of 19cm.  The second earthquake moved the island another 1.78m southwest, and lifted it 31cm.

Some pressure was released with those two earthquakes but according to the Indonesian Government’s science institute LIPI, they only released an estimated 40 per cent of the energy trapped under the earth’s crust. The plates are locked along a 600km section near Siberut Island, the northernmost Mentawai Island, with the energy building up.

Unfortunately for the 76,000 strong population in the Mentawai Islands and the 800,000 population of Nias Island, their proximity to this fault line means there is little chance that the coastal communities will benefit from the recently announced Indonesian Tsunami Early Warning System (TEWS). Scientists predict that a tsunami would most likely crash into these islands within 30 minutes.

This is where SurfAid’s Emergency Preparedness (E-Prep) Program comes into play. E-Prep is a three-year, community-based program sponsored by AusAID, the Australian Government’s overseas aid program. SurfAid works in partnership with 56 communities in the region - 33 villages in Nias and 23 isolated hamlets in the Mentawai.

The $3 million program has been working to improve basic community knowledge of natural disaster as well as provide key community volunteers with the skills necessary to react quickly and decisively in the face of earthquakes, potential tsunami and a range of other identified disasters such as floods, landslides and epidemics.

Since June 2008, E-Prep teams have been travelling into isolated communities to build up the skills of the community Disaster Management Teams. They now know how to treat the wounded, evacuate people with injuries and how to employ basic search and rescue techniques.

They have designed standard operating procedures for emergency response including local early warning systems and procedures for high-ground evacuation. They have identified evacuation routes and have prepared evacuation sites and food stocks at high ground. They have planned for all possible disasters and they are ready to respond.

“We know we’ve got to be ready to help ourselves because who knows when help could arrive here,” said Moses, the head of Katurai Village, near Playgrounds. “So our community is ready, we have enough food to live for two months if something big happens.”

E-Prep has trained more than 1600 volunteers in a range of specialist skills. The emphasis has been on communities using local and available resources. For example, communities learn how to make stretchers from bamboo and sarongs and evacuate vulnerable pregnant women using chairs or doors.

“The focus is on creating a culture of safety,” said E-Prep Administration and Reporting Program Manager, Turmizi Ali. “We started with school-based training before moving to the community level. So now everyone is prepared, from schoolkids up to village elders.”

Mona Lisa is one of SurfAid’s Community Facilitators who lives in Katurei village. She is a local who speaks the dialect and understands the local culture and customs.

“If the earthquake is longer than 50 seconds there is also the chance of a tsunami so the people know they need to run to higher ground along evacuation routes that they have prepared,” Mona said. “Being prepared means saving lives.”

Kirk Willcox is SurfAid’s Communications Director. You can email him at: kirk@surfaidinternational.org

You can donate to SurfAid via their website at: surfaidinternational.org