A Sheet of Plastic on a Strip of Street Serves as Home—for Now
31 May 2006
For more than 100,000 people near Yogyakarta, torrential rains have added to the misery they have had to endure since Saturday when a massive earthquake struck.
Under a blue Oxfam tarp outside a hospital in Bantul on the Indonesian island of Java, Tulus and his brother, Apri, have spent three long, wet nights — part of a throng of 5,000 people camped around the facility.
Torrential rains have added to the misery an estimated 130,000 people have had to endure since Saturday when a massive earthquake struck near the city of Yogyakarta and destroyed their homes. The temblor killed more than 5,000 people and left thousands of others injured.
Tulus, 22, and Apri, 6, escaped unharmed. But now they bear the saddest of burdens: Their 12-year-old brother, Heri, died when the family’s house in the village of Canden collapsed above the heaving ground. And their grandfather, Nguali Utomo, suffered a head injury that left him unconscious. Their search for treatment brought the family of five to the overflowing hospital at Bantul, nine miles from their ruined home.
Burying a Lost BrotherBut before hitching a ride to Bantul on a passing truck, Tulus, Apri, and other surviving members of their small family found a place amid the ruins to bury Heri.
“We are glad to be saved, but we don’t know what to do, where to go,” said Tulus. “We have no home anymore.”
Instead, home is now a stretch of street covered by a sheet of plastic outside the Bantul hospital. With the grandfather’s head wounds in bandages, the family was preparing to spend a fourth night in the rain.
“We are not ready yet, but we must start to rebuild—something,” said Tulus.
For now, survivors like Tulus and Apri have turned to Oxfam for help. The agency’s Indonesia headquarters are in Yogyakarta, which allowed Oxfam to begin distributing emergency supplies almost immediately after the earthquake. Oxfam had stockpiled relief goods in preparation for a possible volcanic eruption at Mount Merapi, about 20 miles away.
Emergency SuppliesThe evening following the dawn earthquake on May 27, Oxfam delivered water and emergency supplies, including some hygiene kits, to thousands of people camped around the hospital as they cared for injured family members who were awaiting treatment.
Oxfam aid has already reached 20,000 people and the agency plans to assist a total of 100,000 survivors during the next three months.
-- Reported by Craig Owen
