Communicating risks of disasters to insecure public

Ardimas Sasdi, Jakarta

In a terse, sharp remark on the sheer panic that enveloped Padang after a powerful quake jolted the province, an academic- cum-journalist colleague said, "Our society is sick. We need to do something".

For the sake of politeness, I just nodded, although I saw the matter differently. It sounds like the all too common excuse by the government to shift the blame for its failure to protect its residents. West Sumatrans, like many other Indonesian ethnic groups, indeed posses local wisdom with regard to how they should react to dangerous situations, especially devastating natural disasters.

The values however are not static, but evolve along with time and the nature of risks. For example, the resilience of already wary people will likely crumble in the face of reports of impending tsunamis or other disasters.

The way residents of Padang reacted when a 6.7-magnitude quake jolted the city on April 10 -- three and a half months after the Aceh quake and tsunami, which wreaked havoc -- should be seen through this perspective.

The images of the Aceh tsunami, showed over and over again on TV, was more powerful than logical reasoning for the people of Padang. Even those not directly affected by the tragedy like Jakartans, who previously frequented the beaches of Anyer and Carita, have chosen to visit resorts in mountain areas like Puncak since the tsunami and two quakes near Karakatau.

"Some people were so afraid of another tsunami that they left behind valuables, like vehicles, which were necessary to take them to safer areas. On that day the streets leading up into hills were clogged by people and vehicles," a Padang resident said, adding that almost all 600,000 residents of the coastal city rushed out of their homes and fled to higher ground in a matter of minutes.

The exodus turned Padang into a temporary ghost town. Except they left behind their sick relatives and small children, and put their fate God's hands.

"The situation was so chaotic that even attendants at gas stations fled and left their jobs when they received "information" of the impending tsunami from motorists filling up their tanks. This condition left motorists in a dilemma. On one side they needed gas, but the could not fill their tanks. So some filled the tanks of their own cars," the resident of Padang explained.

Intensive media coverage on natural disasters since the Aceh tsunami, some less than accurate, also have had serious ramifications on the business sector and the way the people view risks and expectations from the government.

The number of visits by tourists to some areas is also down, but the media is not to blame for this gloomy trend. Foreign tourists, who made a great contribution to the Nias economy, can no longer be seen on the island's beaches. The drop in economic activity has forced locals to collect dried seaweed to eat, and search far and wide for potable water.

Attempts to lure visitors back to tourist resorts is not easy. Tourist operators in Anyer and Carita on the Sunda Strait in Banten, complained that even though volcanology experts said that the Karakatau mountain's activity would not endanger Anyer beach, tourists' perceptions were hard to change.

These cases demonstrated that the handling and communicating of risks to the public, especially the people who have been battered by a series of calamities, is a mammoth task. But alas the government, which is always too late, has done very little in the way of a public campaign to educate people about natural disasters.

The theory of communication dictates that information proliferates amid uncertainty. Some are positive, but others are not, and even misleading, such as rumors spread by irresponsible parties to exploit chaotic conditions to create unrest or to commit crimes such as looting.

The handling of information to an already vulnerable public, who certainly have lost trust in the government, is not a simple task, but needs a multipronged approach. First and foremost is to regain the lost trust. Thus the government must make restoring the trust a priority.

The next step is to build action plans, which involve all concerned parties like the media and a team of experts, and form a team of credible experts to implement these principles for the handling of risks.

These measures must be done simultaneously with public education on risks, drills on disaster precautions and the promotion of local tradition, as has been the case of Simeulue island residents, who go to the beach and check the surface of water, to develop of an early warning system. Only 10 residents of Simeulue, the closest land mass to the epicenter of the quake, were killed in the Dec. 26 quake and tsunami, a minuscule figure compared to the number of victims in other areas.

The people must also be made aware that irrational responses like panic and hysteria in the face of threats is not only unhelpful, but also creates new problems.

Communicating risks to the public should also better reflect concerns of the public. And initiatives should also be developed to improve levels of public and media understanding about risk concepts and the need for the improvement of the accuracy of reporting of crises.

In a climate of uncertainty and weak public trust, the management of information on risks should be conducted as openly, transparently and realistically as possible. When those things are done, costly crises have been prevented and the people have been served.

The author is a staff writer of The Jakarta Post.