In Indonesia’s Cianjur regency, those living on a previously uncharted fault line were caught by surprise, leading to mass casualties.
CIANJUR, West Java: Standing on top of a steep slope overlooking a raging river, Nanang Sukmana gazed at the remnants of his earthquake-hit village. The sight gave the 52-year-old school teacher a sense of awe and disbelief.
What remained of his home was parts of an exterior wall jutting out from the ground. Its neon blue paint was fading and smeared by the mud, but this was enough to convince Sukmana that his house once stood there. Earthquakes are common in Indonesia, an archipelago that straddles the so-called Pacific Ring of Fire. However, it is rare for a quake with a magnitude of less than six – which scientists classified as “moderate” – to have such a devastating impact.
Three months after the deadly quake, local authorities are still drawing lessons on how spatial planning could have resulted in the loss of lives while redesigning the area for a safer future.‘Wait for me in heaven, my child’: Schoolchildren form the biggest casualties in West Java earthquakeFarrizki Astrawinata shook his head in disbelief as he walked through the rubble-strewn alleyways of Cianjur’s Benjot village.
“Look at the quality of this cement mixture,” he continued as he picked up a chunk off of a damaged wall and crushed it into coarse dust with his hand. The Cugenang Fault Line – named after the worst affected district and where the epicentre of the November quake is believed to be – could have laid dormant for generations until eventually, everyone was oblivious to its existence, scientists said.
“All this time, we focused our disaster mitigation efforts on Mount Gede and South Cianjur which is prone to tsunamis. But God has other plans. appeared on the Cugenang Fault Line, which according to scientists is a new discovery,” the regent told CNA. “Such massive devastation made people realise that we cannot build a structure without science. must be truly quakeproof,” he told CNA.
“With Cianjur proven to be quake-prone, we have to conduct a massive education campaign for adults and even children. We plan on having schools teach pupils what to do when an earthquake hits Cianjur, so that the people of Cianjur will be ready when a disaster strikes,” he said.Budi Rahayu Toyib, an assistant secretary for the Cianjur government said the regency is planning to ban houses and other structures from being built near the newly discovered fault line.
The Cianjur government is drafting its new spatial planning law based on findings by the Meteorology and Geophysics Agency. The agency believes that the fault line is around 9km long, from North by Northwest to South by Southeast, cutting through at least nine villages.Umay, a 65-year-old resident of Rawa Cina village, one of the worst impacted areas and classified as a red zone under the new spatial planning law, said people in his neighbourhood are divided over whether to uproot themselves.
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