The cultural dimension of disasters

Koen Meyers Jakarta

The earthquake and tsunami of Dec. 26, 2004 has caused more than two hundred thousand victims and evoked a tremendous impact on the livelihood systems of coastal communities in the region, i.e. Indonesia, Sri Lanka, South India, Thailand and the Maldives.

The warning regarding the disaster came too late or not at all for many coastal communities. One of the main reasons attributed to the high death toll was the lack of an Indian Ocean Tsunami Early Warning System (EWS) to detect tsunamis and warn coastal communities. Despite the strong commitment of many countries towards the establishment of tsunami warning systems, major issues regarding the level of preparedness for future similar disasters still need to be addressed.

An important component of the EWS is the presence of communication infrastructure to ensure that the end receiver will obtain a timely warning. However, such infrastructure may be too expensive and not available to many coastal communities in the region.

Other issues related to operating the EWS in developing nations include the risk that a top-down warning will not generate the expected outcome at the community level. Even if people are warned about disasters, they might hesitate to evacuate or take necessary precautions due to their livelihood situation. The choice communities have to make in leaving behind and risking the loss or damage of their limited belongings is often a decision which involves putting at risk the future of their livelihoods.

Taking into account the situation of coastal communities in the region, community education and awareness is therefore the most important component of disaster EWS. One important aspect often overlooked in disaster preparedness related education is the power of local culture in raising awareness and preparing communities.

An example often used to promote the importance of education as a component of the EWS is that of a 10 year old British girl named Tilly Smith who studied tsunamis in geography class at school and recognized the warning signs of the receding ocean in northern Phuket, Thailand. Though the case, which was picked up and widely exposed by the media, stresses the importance of education, more "local" and "appropriate" cases of successful disaster reduction strategies like the one in Simeulue often remain relatively unknown to the broad public.

The low death toll on Simeulue Island, which is located very close to the Aceh earthquake, is related to an "ancestral experience" in 1907, when an earthquake generated a tsunami and killed a large number of the island's dwellers. When the earthquake hit the island on Dec. 26, 2004, the inhabitants of Simeulue left their houses to observe the sea water level. When they noticed that the seawater was receding, the community immediately started evacuating to higher grounds.

Many other communities in the region have shared similar experiences, in which the disaster became embedded in the community's collective conscience and transformed into folklore and customary practices. As many communities throughout the region have been living in the disaster-prone areas for over thousands of years, their cultures have been exposed to major natural disasters.

Historical disaster experiences have been incorporated in many still-existing local perceptions in preparing and dealing with disasters that often consist of efficient self-help strategies, as proven by the Simeuleu case.

The two channels through which grassroots culture interprets and deals with disasters are folklore (e.g. legends, songs, memorials and stories) and customary practices (e.g. settlement patterns, architecture and resource use). Folklore is in this case a product of a cultural interpretation of a disaster and is used within that setting as a popular tool for people to "learn" about disasters.

Examples as the biblical story of Noah are very old tools in advertising the dangers of flood to a broader public. In the region, the Hindu Puranas tell the story of a great flood in which the ancestor of humankind Manu was saved by an incarnation of Brahma the Lord of Creation, or in later accounts Vishnu, the Lord of Preservation, appearing as a gigantic fish that towed his boat to safety.

The 1927 Mississippi flood experience was translated into Bleus songs like When the Levee Breaks, Tallahacie River Blues and Risin' High Water Blues. In Siberut, Mentawai archipelago, West-Sumatra, Indonesia, there is children's song with lyrics about an earthquake and a tsunami. However, the song lost its meaning over time as societal changes have led to the erosion of traditional knowledge and it was not until the recent tsunami that UNESCO staff working in Siberut started reinterpreting and fully understanding the song and using it as an awareness tool.

The word "Teteu" in Mentawaian means both grandfather and earthquake. Local people thought the song told the story of an angry grandfather, whilst in actual fact it simply describes a detailed picture of what happened during an earthquake and tsunami. Many songs and stories, which are found in communities all over the region, reflect societal and individual experiences with disasters and are passed on to new generations.

Disaster-inspired cultural products of the everyday are made and consumed by grassroots communities and play therefore an important role in shaping knowledge of people. Most people learn about disasters and disaster behavior through cultural products, underlining their educational value in raising awareness of people.

These products are the interpretation of disasters and are often conceived in such way that they allow an easy understanding and response to disasters without having to experience them and without a basic scientific understanding on disasters. These so- called popular representations of disasters and related responses are often more effective in raising community awareness than the information disseminated by emergency organizations.

The second channel through which grassroots cultures interpret and deal with disasters is customary practices and knowledge. Due to historical exposure to disasters, communities have learnt important lessons and developed strategies to anticipate, reduce, mitigate and respond to disasters.

The disaster-derived practices and knowledge are open to adaptations over time community experiences change as well as the social, economic, political, cultural and natural environment of the community.

The first level of understanding is a conscious understanding of the practices and knowledge, allowing people to derive specific -- often life-saving -- responses and actions when facing a disaster. A good example of such conscious understanding is the case of Simeuleu where people can read the signs of a coming tsunami.

Due to its immense scale, the December tragedy had a significant impact on community perceptions regarding disasters. The collective conscience of many communities affected by the tsunami is thought to have been seriously influenced by the event.

The writer is a consultant for UNESCO Office in Jakarta.