Earthquakes

Again some English language greetings from hot Jakarta. I don't know if anyone has managed to escape the news of one further earthquake in Indonesia. It's my third big earthquake during my one month time here, reports of minor quakes come in all the time. This earthquake took place yesterday close to southern Sumatra and the epicentre was close to the city of Pandang. It was measured 7.5-7.9 on the richter scale and at the moment of writing this, at least 450 people have died, thousands injured, and many more are still trapped in their collapsed houses.

The Finnish embassy in Jakarta has an emergency phone which can be reached 24/7.. it's for contacting someone from the embassy at all times in emergency situations. The embassy staff has made a rotational system, so that one of the Finnish staff members has the phone with him or her always one week at a time and is available for picking up the phone around the clock. During the time when they are on déjour, they have to be within reasonable distance from the office also, in case something happens and they are needed in Jakarta.

Yesterday I went to the gym after work where i saw my colleague, the one who was on crisis watch with The Phone this week. She said she had just been on a workout class when the phone rang, and it was our colleague who was on a business trip in Aceh and told us about the earthquake. After that the lines cut and we couldn't get hold of her anymore. We heard the news; it was a strong earthquake in Sumatra and was even felt in our high 26-floor office building in Jakarta as minor shaking. We were however still in the gym, telephone connections to Sumatra were totally blocked and nobody knew yet what kind of damage this quake had caused. My colleague had already reported to the ministry of Foreign Affairs in Finland and, as after every catastrophe, we needed to know if the Finnish citizens in the area were okay.

My gym-colleague needed to take a shower after her class and I offered to watch the phone during that time, in case there would be more information or in case somebody would report having been in the middle of the incident. And of course, during that 10 mins I watched the phone, the crisis department of the Ministry called and required more information about the event. They wanted to know how many Finns live in the area, they wanted to know a contact person from our embassy for the media. It was already around 7pm in the evening but my colleagues had to go back to the office to collect the contact info about all the Finns in the area to be able to call them and check that they are fine. There are only 19 Finnish citizens in that area who've given their contact info to the embassy so I wasn't called to duty.

I contacted mum, dad and Rob, told them about the quake and said I was ok, in fact I didn't even feel this earthquake as this country is huge and the epicentre is not really next door. But I'm just thinking how it would feel like for me if I hear that something's happened around the area in which someone I care about is, and if I wouldn't get hold of that person immeadiately it would drive me nuts. I went home from the gym and saw the news on TV, and that was actually the worst. They had actually been filming in the town of Pandang which was struck the worst. Even on the TV you can see the enormous trembling, mothers grab their babies and start running to an open area, followed by a bunch of crying children. They filmed families who just wept outside their collapsed houses and god knows how many of their loved ones are somewhere under the rubble. And everybody is crying. At some point I had to turn off the TV because I couldn't take hearing all that crying over and over again. I just followed the situation in the online news. But it's obviously hard to get any news from the area as the phone networks are overcrowded and some of the infrastructure is destroyed.

By the evening the number of dead reached 75 and many, many more people are still trapped under the ruins of their houses. The Indonesian government has already sent some help troops to the area to search for survivors from the ruins and to offer shelter and food for the people. The people are so poor, I don't even know what they can do. Just feel so sorry for Indonesia, having to live with this geographical situation, or "Ring of Fire" as they call it, villages and towns are destroyed once in a while and the reconstruction takes years.

This day at work is difficult, the attaché contacted the rest of the Finns in the area and some worried Finns contact us from Finland telling that their friends are somewhere here in Indonesia but can't get hold of them. All I can do is to follow the news to see how the situation develops. I heard that not long ago, this morning at 9am, Sumatra had an afterquake between the towns of Jambi and Bengkulu, measuring 7.0 on the Richter scale. I have no idea about amount of victims yet, or if there are any.

Around that time in the morning one of my colleagues came into the room and said she felt our office shaking and heard a crack. I didn't feel it at all, but these earthquakes are just constantly present and we have to learn to live with them. I'm never going to forget September 2nd, when the earthquake of West Java was felt very strongly here in Jakarta: our high office building was rocking from one side to another so hard that standing still was hard and we heard how the walls were cracking. Some walls in this building have now long cracks as a memory from that day. Someone said the only reason why this, and all the tens of tall buildings in Jakarta, didn't collapse was that the earthquake took place very deep down in the earth and quite far from Jakarta. Today, earthquake-instructions were distributed to all of us employees:

TIPS IN CASE OF EARTQUAKE:

1. During an earthquake

1.1 Indoors:
- Take cover under desks, tables, beds or brace yourself in a doorway and protect head, neck and eyes
- If you cannot shelter, drop to the ground with your back to the wall, cradle head with arms and protect neck and eyes with clasped arms
- Avoid glass partitions and windows
- Maintain position until shaking stops

1.2 In an elevator:
- Drop to the floor and protect head, neck and eyes

1.3 Outdoors:
- Drop to your knees and protect head, neck and eyes
- Maintain position until shaking stops

1.4 In a vehicle:
- Pull over to the side of the road but avoid stopping on or under overpasses or bridges
- Turn off ignition and set brake
- Remain inside the vehicle until the shaking has stopped

2. After an earthquake

2.1 Indoors:
- Check yourself and others for injuries and render first aid
- Avoid panicking and rushing to an exit
- Do not turn on lights or light any matches or naked flames such as cigarette lighters
- In a public space (malls, offices, restaurants...), wait the instructions from the building before trying to evacuate
- Evacuation is usually carried out in accordance to the fire evacuation plan
- If no instructions come, proceed calmly to an exit
- If fire escapes cannot be used, remain where you are and await assistance from the emergency services
- Never try to use an elevator

2.2 At home:
- Put on sturdy shoes to avoid injury from broken glass
- Check for fire hazards and shut off utilities if necessary

Unfortunately, I somehow can't see the point of going under a table if a quake hits while we're in the office and almost 20 floors come crashing down (Finnish embassy is in floor 9 out of 27). Well, the buildings are modern and built considering the realities of this region, so nobody has any reason to worry :) it is just a really creepy experience and I never want to live that again.

Well, back to work now. It's going to be a really tough day, one of the big electricity companies had a fire 2 days ago and electricity in the area in which I live and work is affected. While they are repairing the damages of the fire, our office runs on power generator and it means our air conditioning is not working normally and this whole day we didn't have any internet connection. That obviously hardens getting news from the earthquake sites... at the moment I'm prepared to go to a meeting with UN and Red Cross, they inform the embassies and NGOs about the situation... Glad the computers work with the help of the generator anyway, even if we are experiencing total power cuts every 1-2 hours or so :) Greetings from Indonesia! Let me tell you that life here is exciting.