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Indonesian architect works with quake victims to build temblor-proof homes

Architect Eko Prawoto poses in front of the structure of an anti-quake house in Bantul, Indonesia, on Friday. Many Indonesians would have survived the May 27 earthquake if their houses had been built out of more flexible materials, he says. PHOTO: AFP

Many Indonesians would have survived a deadly earthquake last month if houses had been built out of bamboo and other flexible materials, says an architect on a mission to transform devastated villages.

Eko Prawoto, who is working with homeless survivors in Ngipikan, a village in an area hard-hit by the quake that rocked Central Java and Yogyakarta, blames poor construction techniques for the huge loss of life and injuries.

"Many people who died in this earthquake died because of the brick walls that fell on them," he said.

The 6.3-magnitude temblor killed 5,800 people, injured up to 40,000 people and destroyed or damaged almost 600,000 houses in the heavily-populated area, which like much of Indonesia faces a constant risk of serious earthquakes.

Many of the houses that were damaged or flattened were built of brick and concrete and featured little reinforcement to resist the shockwaves of the quake, Prawoto says.

A preliminary assessment by the government's Development Planning Agency (Bappenas) also blamed poor construction for the high injury and death toll.

"Many people who died in this earthquake died because of the brick walls that fell on them."

Eko Prawoto, architect

A bookshop and some houses in Yogyakarta built after Prawoto's mostly timber designs survived the May 27 quake undamaged, were his first experiments in quake-resistant construction.

"It's a wooden structure -- which is elastic -- and absorbs shocks ... During an earthquake, you have pushing and pulling forces. Each junction should resist these kind of forces," he said.

In Java, as in much of Indonesia, residences made of bamboo and timber are generally looked down upon as poor people's housing, whereas concrete and brick are viewed as symbols of modernity and rising wealth, Prawoto said.

Nevertheless in the aftermath of the quake, many traumatized villagers now fear living or even sitting inside brick or concrete buildings.

"It's a traumatic experience for them," he said.

For Ngipikan, where almost all the houses were destroyed, Prawoto has designed houses for rebuilding that use traditional materials but have a modern twist: The lower half of the house walls are brick and the upper half bamboo, with coconut trees used for the structural posts.

"It's important to apply bamboo and timber in a different way so as to give the image of newness," he said.

"We use brick but only 1m high -- so in case an earthquake happens again, if it falls down then it's not so dangerous," he said.

Assisted by donations from the local daily Kompas, Prawoto has begun building four of a planned 65 houses. He hopes the houses will serve as a model for other residents looking to build cheap but strong new homes.

With free labor provided by villagers and using recycled timber from the collapsed houses in combination with low-cost bamboo, he estimates each house will cost 10 million rupiah (US$1,060).

The government has promised to pay 30 million rupiah to quake victims whose houses were destroyed, but Prawoto suspects such assistance will take months to be disbursed and people cannot wait that long.
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