Deadly Recycling

Observations of earthquake scientist Rus Wheeler (USGS) on the damage from the 26 May 2006 earthquake in southcentral Java in Indonesia:

Thanks, Tiku, for the additional damage photos. This was a moderate earthquake (M 6.3), but it occurred on land instead of offshore and probably at shallow depths. Thus, it was close to the most severely damaged areas, although the damaged area was relatively small based on the Shakemap and Did-You-Feel-It maps on the Web pages for this earthquake at http://earthquake.usgs.gov/. And yesterday, farther southwest, a much bigger earthquake occurred (M 7.7), which released about 100 times as much energy. However, this one was well offshore in the Indonesian trench, so most of the damage and deaths were from a 2-m-high tsunami.

Your photo shows the distraught woman in the rubble of her home. The photo also shows a small cleared area in which someone was beginning to salvage and organize individual stone or concrete blocks. Worldwide, such unreinforced masonry is the single deadliest building material because it is brittle and cannot flex to withstand shaking. It is also heavy and squashes people. Unfortunately, it is widely available where other materials can cost more, if they can be obtained at all. I expect that the survivors of the earthquake will have little choice but to rebuild with the rubble from the last earthquake, to repeat the cycle.
It is only a matter of time until a large earthquake occurs under a megacity somewhere in the world. Roger Bilham, a geophysicist at University of Colorado, Boulder, has been telling us for several years that one day an earthquake will kill a million people. I also recall a talk given by Charley Langer, a former colleague here about two decades ago, after he returned from an aftershock survey following the Spitak earthquake in Armenia. Spitak was a town of 25,000 people. Most of them appear to have lived in multi-story apartment blocks that were constructed according to the Soviet practice of supporting thick concrete floors on pillars with little or no reinforcing, one story after another. The floors pancaked and no one had a chance. As Charley stood up to begin his talk, the room was filled with the usual scattered chatter. He didn't say a word for several minutes, but just began to show one slide after another. The chatter stopped, and it stayed stopped. The slides showed piles on piles of concrete rubble, with nothing standing except the occasional corner of a concrete building. The town was virtually wiped out in an instant.

The memory of those slides helps to keep me focused on my work. Thanks again for the photos. They provide a dimension that is not usually available for our Web site.


Rus



My Postscript:
We were walking on the Parangtritis beach (south of Bantul, which was destroyed by the 26 May 2006 earthquake) only 12 days before the July 17 earthquake that occurred offshore western Java and created the latest tsunami. We learnt from newpaper accounts that, eventhough this area was some 200 km away from the main brunt of the tsunami, the huts on the beach were washed off. Our private taxi driver/owner, Tori, told us that there were a lot of rumors in Bantul and Parangtritis area about tsunami coming after the May 26 earthquake; the tsunami didn’t occur then. Had an actual tsunami warning been issued this time, it could have been received by the people as the case of "cry wolf". It turns out that the tsunami warning could not be issued due to the lack of instrumentation and information dissemination mechanisms.


A U. S. Geological Survey graphic of the location of the 17 July 2006 earthquake. Parangtritis beach is south of Yogyakarta.


Huts on Parangtritis beach prior to the tsunami.


Damaged huts from the tsunami on Parangtritis beach from the 17 July 2006 earthquake (Photo credit AFP/Tarko Sudiarno)

The Irrestistible Deal

“Your baggage is 8 kg over the limit” said the apologizing tone of the woman at the airline check-in counter. Knowing that our baggage would certainly be over the limit of fifteen kgs, and the 20,000 Rupiah per kg over-the-limit rate we had noticed when we purchased the tickets at Air Asia ticket counter in Denpasar airport, I pulled out two 100,000 Rupiah notes. There was hesitation behind the counter. Had the rate been out of date like nearly every price we encountered in Bali during our visit, I wondered. “That’s 160, right?”

“Do you have a continuing flight?” the hesitant voice continued. “No”, I replied, realising that meant the options for not paying had been exhausted.

There was a secretive low tone conversation between the check-in agent and the baggage handler and the woman said disappointedly, “OK, we will charge you 100.” Ah, I thought, the unrecognisable India has caught up with the familiar one. I said to Srimati, “I guess this means no receipt, huh?” “No, no. Receipt, yes!” the emphatic voice on the other side of the counter intervened.

Srimati and I agreed to the deal we had not counted on making here. I guess we deprived the agent of the enjoyment of making the deal — and she couldn’t stand charging us the “starting” price.

Over our week here, we learnt that there is a “starting” price for nearly everything in Bali. The price is just to get the conversation going — the sale would hardly prove the mettle of either the buyer or the seller without the bargaining exchange.

In the Ubud market, after making a very attractive spice deal (I am thinking attractive for us, but it had to be so for the seller also as well for the sale to go through), in which the prices of items agreed and disagreed were too difficult to keep track of because we were negotiating different quantities of 4-5 items at once, and which even produced the “boss lady” in a cameo appearance on the verge of breaking the deal, the level of satisfaction on both sides was so much that I had decided to pay the vendors more upon our return through the maze of stalls. But the same woman, who stuck out her tongue at me in irritation during the negotiations, was extremely friendly and smiling and offered a hand in peace even before I gave the extra money to the boss lady.

Vendors couldn’t always make the deals consistently and to their advantage due to lack of arithmetic skills. On one of our day trips, our tour driver dropped us off at an isolated restaurant for our lunch where prices for the buffet were too high and the entrées on the menu held a worse promise, and while our tour group was debating what to do the waiter made an offer to lower the prices. After a while, our group managed to bring the price of the buffet plus tax to 45,000 Rupiah, in place of the “starting” published price of 60,000 plus 20% tax (the tax is really 10%, and most good restaurants charged us 5% service). The waiter discussed this price with the manager and came back saying that it was too complicated to figure the actual price and tax for our 45,000 Rupiah offer, and that they had decided to make a counter offer of 35 plus 7, totaling 42,000 Rupiah.

Bali is desperate from the decline in tourists after the two bombings. Srimati and I hoped that the Indonesian government would put some resources into diversifying the economy in this place so it won’t have to live by the ebb and flow of tourism. Perhaps we could enjoy the deals more wholeheartedly then.