Communicating risks of disasters to insecure public

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.