30th April, 2005

Recently returned to Australia after spending a month in Aceh working with Australian missionary organisation Mobile Mission Maintenance, Victorian DAVID FREEMAN writes of the efforts to rebuild devastated communities...

I had gone to Aceh on behalf of Mobile Mission Maintenance (MMM), an Australian missionary organisation, to assess how MMM could assist in the reconstruction process following the 2005 Boxing Day tsunami. MMM were going to Aceh at the request of YBI, an Indonesian Christian organisation which had been founded by a missionary from Victoria, Rev. Dr. Jeff Hammond.

There are hundreds of NGOs (non government organisations) and all are working to bring aid to people who have been devastated by the combined effects of a massive earthquake, the waves of the tsunami, and the subsequent salination of the land by the seawater which has not been able to drain away.

The greatest devastation was caused by the tsunami which had a wave height of approximately 23 metres when it crossed the shore line of Banda Aceh.  Banda Aceh, a city of approximately 500,000 people, is built on a flood plain and lies only a metre or so above sea level. As a result, the tsunami was able to penetrate up to seven kilometres inland from the shore line.

There are some amazing sights to be seen. For example, an ocean-going fishing boat about 12 metres long is poised, like a trophy ship in a bottle, symmetrically mounted on the walls of a house, five metres above ground level.  In another place  a monsterous ocean-going barge, many hundreds of tons in weight, is “parked” amidst a group of suburban houses, approximately two-and-a-half kilometres inland.

Given that the wave height of the tsunami was 23 metres, its speed must have been great.  Anything standing in its way was smashed, especially if it was carrying 'battering rams' such as coconut palms, motor cars or ocean-going barges.

The damage done to families is beyond comprehension. I have before me the statistics for one village. Of the 68 families on the list, 48 heads of families, 48 wives and 64 children aged under 15  were killed, plus a number of children whose ages were not given. Twenty-two of the 68 families were totally wiped out.

The survivors have lost most of their families, their homes, their clothing and possessions, fresh water, toilet facilities, power and, in many cases, their means of livelihood. Yet, amazingly, they are cheerful and they are getting on with reconstruction, doing whatever they can.

They are enormously grateful for us being there and for bringing whatever aid we can. They need medical aid, skilled labour, money, homes, power and fresh water services, roadways, drainage and schools. 

Local government is slow in exercising control over the reconstruction process because, apart from the  needs being so massive, they have lost a great number of their own personnel. Their records have also been washed away, and their offices , office equipment and construction and maintenance equipment are wrecked or lost.

Another looming problem is that those people who lived within about 500 metres of the sea will have to be moved back and given new housing sites and, presumably, compensation. This process is expected to be difficult and traumatic, because people always want to go back to the place they were driven out of. There is a pressing need for surveyors in Aceh, right now, to record how things were and to survey the new property and roadway boundaries.

I will be returning to Aceh early in May and, hopefully, workparties will be following - initially to make habitable homes which are damaged but not destroyed and, eventually, to commence the building of new homes, once all the requirements of the Indonesian Government have been satisfied.