One Week in Yogyakarta: Earthquake Response is Hard and Humbling

Posted: 14 June 2006

Craig Owen is the communications manager for Oxfam’s tsunami response in Aceh, Indonesia. He was in Yogyakarta when the earthquake ripped the city apart on May 27. Here is his story.

Craig Oweb I am sitting in an internet cafe in Jakarta, trying to grasp what I have just been through this past week in Yogyakarta where a major earthquake has left hundreds of thousands of people homeless on the Indonesian island of Java. As the adrenalin wears off and exhaustion sets in, I realize the quake has shaken me to the bone.

As the media and advocacy manager for Oxfam’s tsunami relief program in Aceh and Nias, I should have been in Bangkok this past week attending an agency meeting. My plan was to stop in Jakarta on business and take a weekend in Yogyakarta, the spiritual and cultural heart of Indonesia. I wanted to see the great temple of Borobodur, to relax, and to get away from disasters for a day. Fate had another plan for me.

Rumors Ricochet

On Saturday, May 27, as the 5:55 a.m. Boeing 737 fires its engines on the runway, a sudden jolt rocks the cabin. The plane brakes in mid-takeoff, throwing us forward. We taxi about and then return to the terminal where we disembark and find the lounge. There, we learn the Yogyakarta airport has had a technical problem. Rumors ricochet around the lounge. Has Mount Merapi erupted? The volcano has been on high alert and flashes up on the television screens, but with no news. Hours pass. We are ushered back onto the plane, and learn that there is something about an earthquake, that is forcing us to get rerouted to Solo, 90 minutes north of Yogyakarta.

In Solo, the airport is bedlam. We all want our transfers to Yogya. There are no transfers. But there is news: An earthquake with a magnitude has hit Yogyakarta, injuring 15 people and causing some damage to the runway at the airport there. We have quakes in Aceh all the time, so this doesn't seem that big a deal. A small group of us finally manage to convince a very wary taxi driver to drive us to Yogyakarta.

Something is not Right

As we come in through the north of the city, we can see the cracks in buildings, some fallen tiled roofs, and people casually clearing small pieces of debris. It all seems perfectly normal in a country familiar with the wrath of Mother Nature.

In central Yogya I try to book into my hotel. But it is shut—structurally unsafe. I try to call another hotel. My phone is not working. Nor is anyone else's. There are no telecommunications at all it seems. I slowly realize I may be stuck here. Why did I go against the flow of evacuating traffic? But all seems fairly calm. I wander around near the railway station and book a train ticket to Jakarta for tomorrow, in case I can't get back to Solo for a flight. I buy the last ticket. Things are calm, but something is not right.

I realize my media colleague Paulette Song, from Oxfam America, is also in the area, and that in fact she must have been in the quake. I send her a message to find out if she is OK.

Three hours after my arrival in Yogya, my phone rings. At last--a connection. It is Gemma Swart, our regional media and advocacy coordinator in Bangkok.

"Are you alright? Where are you?" she asks.

Yes, I reply. I’m in central Yogyakarta.

"Are you serious?!" comes the reply. She asks me to go to the local Oxfam office as quickly as possible. And then she starts rattling off information. 1,500 people in Yogyakarta are dead, and I'm unwittingly in the middle of it. I send a message to Paulette. She has also been cut off from information, and is horrified. She too scrambles to find a way to get to the office.

This Was no Tremor

The Oxfam office is quiet. Everyone is out trying to assess what has happened. Five of the staff here are unaccounted for. The other 15 have rushed in and back out again to help, although some of them have lost homes and even loved ones themselves. Slowly it is dawning on me that this was no tremor. I am in the middle of a humanitarian disaster unfolding before the eyes of the world. And there are few other relief organizations based here, or news reporters. It will take several days for them to arrive.

Paulette and I finally catch up. It turns out she had been on the sixth floor of a hotel in Yogya when the quake struck, and thought she was going to die. But when the shaking stopped, it seemed the damages were not so bad. Only this afternoon has the scale of the disaster become clear..

The teams return from the field. They are harrowed and gaunt. I realize this is going to be bad news, maybe very bad indeed. One team has returned from the town of Bantul about six miles south of Yogya.

Parts of it are flattened. People, dead and alive, are trapped in debris that stretches for miles. Aftershocks are continuing, and people are terrified to return to damaged buildings in case they collapse.

In Mulyodadi, 500 people are preparing to spend the night on the village football field. About 5,000 people have descended on the hospital in Bantul. Frantic and overstretched hospital staff are treating people on the streets.. They have no clean water, no shelter, the night is setting in, and it looks like it's going to rain.

Instant Decisions, Fast Action

Thankfully all Oxfam staff members are now accounted for. Decisions are being made fast and furiously. Trucks and people are mobilized. Oxfam crews raid the agency’s emergency warehouse, stocked up in recent weeks for the threat of a volcanic eruption on nearby Mount Merapi.

They retrieve water and storage equipment, hygiene kits to prevent the outbreak of disease, sarongs for clothing, blankets, and tarpaulins for shelter from the rains. By nightfall, 12 hours after the disaster, these lifesaving supplies have reached 6,000 victims. But the rain has started - black, hard and torrential. Through the windows, the miserable night looks like a vision of hell.

The World Wants to Know

My phone has started connecting sporadically. The world's media are desperate to find out what is happening. It feels like we are the only media contacts on the ground at the moment.

The BBC, New York Times, Herald Tribune, Reuters, AlertNet, Bloomberg, CNN, Australian, NZTV—I rattle through the incoming calls like a newly appointed receptionist for disaster. It doesn't occur to me until later how many millions of people and decision-makers worldwide are forming their images and opinions of the horror unfolding in south Java based upon the limited information I am trying to pass on.

Over the coming days, Paulette and I field nearly 300 interviews worldwide on the disaster. The phone does not stop ringing: At 4 a.m., New Zealand wakes, then Australia, Asia, the Middle East, Europe and finally America.

Twenty two hours later we switch off the phones to grab two hours of sleep. The pattern continues for days. The story is unfolding. The death toll doubles, then triples. Two days in, it is estimated that up to 200,000 survivors are homeless. By the end of the week that number has limbed to 650,000.

Death and Wreckage

I visit the hospital in Bantul where I talk to a family living under an Oxfam tarp on the street. They are looking after their grandfather who has serious injuries. The children’s 12-year old brother was killed when their house collapsed on them. At a flattened market in Pinyungan, I talk to a man who, along with others, rescued 150 people from the wreckage.

In Patuk, a group of five boys are living under tarps outside a flattened local cafe. I join one of the aid convoys to the remote and mountainous region of Gunung Kidul, two and a half hours east of Yogyakarta, to deliver supplies for 60,000 survivors in the jungle. They have nothing, but are worried that their neighbors over the mountain in Wedi have even less. I am humbled by their humanity.

By Tuesday, other aid organizations have started to arrive with supplies. By Friday, 40 of them have set up in the area. Coordination is critical, and we agree on areas of focus so that each agency can deliver deeper support to those in most need.

In days, we develop a three-month plan for Oxfam to deliver water and temporary shelter to 100,000 victims in the South Klaten, North Gunung Kidul, and East Bantul districts.

Moving On

By Thursday, the disaster is already falling off the radar of the international media, who are moving on to new news. A press officer is on her way from Oxford to relieve Paulette and me from our marathon of media work. We are told to rest and return home.

On Friday night, we leave the office and collapse. Suddenly we are back at square one: just tourists visiting Yogyakarta. It's a shift we struggle to work out.

Our flights out are not until Saturday evening. In a twisted strategy to return my life to normal, I decide that morning to do what I came here for. Paulette and I climb in a car and go to the ancient Buddhist temple of Borobodur, about an hour north of the city. The quake has not affected it.

It’s strange to be staring at the reliefs at the ancient temple complex that depict the life story of Buddha's ascent to Nirvana. But at the same time, they offer a much needed sense of personal closure.

Looking out from the pinnacle of Borobodur across the beautiful, verdant plains and rice paddies of south Java—and the ominously puffing Mount Merapi volcano—it all seems so peaceful and serene.

Paulette has been recording the week for a future Oxfam video documentary, and she asks me to say a few words to camera. I start recounting my feelings from the week.

And then the reality hits. Adrenalin gone, I break into tears as I realize that from this viewpoint we can see much of the area where 650,000 people have lost everything.

We have done so much this week of which I am immensely proud, and yet I feel I have done nothing. I have not pulled anyone alive from from a building. I have not personally saddled a motorbike with lifesaving supplies for a remote mountain village.

I have contributed to decisions to target aid convoys to certain areas of most need, which must mean that some people in other places did not get it. We can only help 100,000 people here. That means there are 550,000 other people in need. Other organizations who have since arrived will reach them. But will it be in time? Who might be missed? What if I could have grabbed a few extra minutes here and there to answer some of those missed calls? What if? What if? What if?

Defining Moment

I know these feelings will last a long time. This has not only been a life-changing experience for me, but the defining moment for a whole generation in Java. This aid effort will be no quick fix. It will take years to rebuild this beautiful province, to rebuild homes, and to rebuild lives. I have given it my all for just one paltry week.

But on balance this cloud is eclipsed for me by a silve lining. I have never seen, and perhaps never will again, the strength of humanity and spirit that I have seen around Yogyakarta over the last seven days. This week I have worked in Oxfam Indonesia with some of the most committed and amazing people I have ever met.

But beyond that, this aid effort has been led by local people and communities pulling together to help each other through. Those with nothing are giving everything. I have been privileged to meet some of them firsthand.

They are not asking for hand outs, but a hand up. Aid is all about people.Oxfam is all about people, and recovery from this disaster will be all about people.

I don't know what this will mean for me personally over the coming years, but fate has allowed me to witness the ultimate in human spirit in action.