Disaster command centers face mammoth tasks

Disaster command centers face mammoth tasks

A'an Suryana The Jakarta Post/Banda Aceh

Lt. Col. Gandara is busy. He wanders around a hangar at an air force base in Medan, North Sumatra, where a disaster mitigation command center is located. In his nearby office, other staffers take notes on which planes are ready to land and which are ready to take off.

Many other soldiers, volunteers and government employees are busy unloading aid from trucks and putting it into piles in the hangar.

Some liaison officers chat with foreign guests, who seek information on where they should be dropping aid, or who simply seek a fast way to get to Banda Aceh, the hub of humanitarian relief work.

Helicopters and Hercules airplanes go back and forth to and from the airbase, dropping off aid at the Iskandar Muda Air Force base in Banda Aceh, while others directly distribute aid to places in need across the province.

"We are extremely busy," said Gandara, who is in charge of organizing flights for aircraft that transport people and humanitarian aid to the stricken province.

He said at least seven aircraft went back and forth from the airbase, with each conducting trips twice a day to Banda Aceh and other needy areas in Aceh. The aircraft in question are two Hercules from the Indonesian military (TNI), two Chinook and two Super Puma helicopters from Singapore, and a CN-235 from Malaysia.

But the amount of aid being sent has surpassed the aircraft's capacity, leading to a backlog of aid at the airbase.

However, the backlog of aid has been partly overcome since about a week ago, when a Hercules cargo plane from the U.S. Marines and another from the Australian military started assisting. In addition, between nine and 12 helicopters from the U.S. Navy have also been loading aid from the Iskandar Muda airbase and dropping it to needy areas since Saturday of last week, helping to reduce backlogs at the Medan airbase.

The Medan disaster mitigation command center has various task forces. Their jobs include disseminating information, providing fuel and electricity supplies, and obtaining medical assistance and other necessities for victims.

The center, chaired by North Sumatra Governor Rizal Nurdin, is one of several disaster mitigation command posts in North Sumatra and Aceh provinces. There are three other large command posts, namely the one in Banda Aceh, another in Meulaboh in West Aceh regency and the other in Lhokseumawe, the capital of North Aceh regency.

A significant part of aid is being poured into the Iskandar Muda airbase in Banda Aceh, from where it is distributed to other areas of Aceh.

Military helicopters and planes pick up aid in Banda Aceh and drop it to needy areas in Aceh, their trips being coordinated by Indonesian Military officers led by Maj. Gen. Bambang Dharmono. The two-star general is responsible for dropping of aid, evacuation efforts, and infrastructure rehabilitation.

"For the governance function, this is the responsibility of Azwar Abu Bakar, the deputy governor of Aceh," said Risman Musa, the deputy coordinating minister for people's welfare, who has been in Aceh since Tuesday last week to assist Alwi Shihab.

Azwar is responsible for rebuilding government, deploying or recruiting government officials to affected parts of the province. He is also responsible for collecting data on the number and types of infrastructure damaged in the tsunami disaster, missing persons, people who have died, and where aid has to be dropped.

"We are focusing on maintaining aid distribution to needy areas and corpse evacuation. We are also building large refugee camps that can accommodate as many people as possible, to make it easy for us to drop the aid and provide people with better sanitation facilities," Risman told The Jakarta Post on Friday in Banda Aceh.

In a press release, Alwi said that the government would immediately build five large refugee camps that can accommodate some 8,000 to 20,000 people each.

Risman cited two challenges that the government is facing. Corpse evacuation is becoming more difficult as the remaining bodies are buried beneath building rubble. More and more volunteers are flooding Banda Aceh and other areas of the province, and most of them never register with the government and they work in uncoordinated manners.

From field observation, the volunteers mostly focus on corpse evacuation, while there are actually many refugees who need more attention. The volunteers can also be allocated to help clean up Banda Aceh and it's the job of the government to coordinate them.