Whenever heavy rains come at night in her neighborhood in the ancient Indonesian city of Yogyakarta, schoolteacher Muryani remembers the worst floods she experienced almost 35 years ago.
Sleeping with her mother and two young siblings in a bamboo hut to guard a farmer’s goats from thieves, Muryani feared for their lives as flash floods burst through the door.
“Suddenly the water was so high... It came very fast,” she said. “I was so worried about my mother, who was already quite old. I was afraid we would drown.”
Muryani, 44, still lives in the same area, now a small settlement of about 300 residents called Pedak Baru, which sits by a river close to the Mount Merapi volcano.
As floods have become more frequent over the past five years, Muryani and 25 other local women have teamed up with the YAKKUM Emergency Unit, a project that runs activities to help women protect their communities from disasters in Central Java and Yogyakarta.
The Indonesian government spends an estimated US$300 million to US$500 million annually on building back after disasters, World Bank resilience officials say.
While the nation has reduced poverty over the past 20 years, many hover just above the poverty line and could easily be pushed back under it by a disaster.
However, women can play a crucial role in minimizing the risks for their families and neighbors, experts say.
For Muryani and her family, regular floods have often destroyed their possessions and furniture — which she cannot afford to replace — and forced her two children to miss school, but the disaster training she has received is helping.
“It gives us an awareness for what to do when flooding happens and how to prepare,” she said.
Indonesia has experienced an average of 290 significant natural disasters annually over the past 30 years, according to the World Bank officials.
They include the 2004 tsunami that killed about 167,000 people. After that shock, Jakarta reformed its institutions, laws and policies to better manage disaster risk.
The government introduced a disaster management bill in 2007 that shifted the emphasis from merely responding to disasters toward trying to stop them happening and curbing their effects.
The approach led to the strengthening of the Indonesian National Disaster Management Agency, with representatives and branches put in place across districts.
The agency now encourages civil society groups like YAKKUM to involve women more in efforts to build resilience.
Despite huge progress, more work is needed, and a larger number of government departments should include disaster risk reduction in their projects, especially at the local level, Arghya Sinha Roy of the Asian Development Bank in Manila said.
Indonesian women’s traditional role in running the household means they are sometimes forgotten when a community draws up plans to deal with disasters.
This can lead to them being left behind at home during evacuations or being unaware of safety procedures.
“When you look back at the 2004 tsunami, most of the casualties are women,” Indonesian Institute of Sciences researcher Irina Rafliana said.
Women who survive a major catastrophe are often the ones responsible for getting their families back on their feet, she added.
In Indonesia, women often take care of the family and its finances, meaning they are best placed to suggest ways of protecting lives, property and incomes, experts say.
For example, women tend to quickly grasp the importance of saving key documents during a disaster, and because women spend more time in their neighborhoods, they can pinpoint high-risk areas and influence their peers.
“If you compare Indonesia with other countries in Southeast Asia, the role of women ... in disaster risk reduction is among the strongest,” Rafliana said.
Pedak Baru faces twin threats of flooding and damage to infrastructure caused by eruptions from Mount Merapi.
The only access to the settlement is via a narrow, potholed road, while many of its two-story houses are in a state of disrepair due to regular inundations.
However, things are changing, especially since YAKKUM began working with women in the community three years ago.
Pedak Baru’s women first mapped out their neighborhood to identify the risks and regularly collect rubbish from the river, recycling plastic waste for money.
The women are trained in evacuation procedures and first aid, and help fill and place sandbags along the river’s embankment when waters rise.
Despite scant funding, they have made life preservers from rope and tires, and early-warning drums from bamboo.
Signposts on walls point out escape routes and an evacuation point positioned on higher ground.
The women also hold regular talks with the local branch of the disaster agency, and are campaigning for the permanent reinforcement of their river embankment.
Resident Farida Estiningrum, 39, said the scheme has also been useful in helping young people.
“We have even trained the children on how to save themselves when the flood comes to the houses,” she said. “We are prepared for everything.”
SEEKING CHANGE: A hospital worker said she did not vote in previous elections, but ‘now I can see that maybe my vote can change the system and the country’ Voting closed yesterday across the Solomon Islands in the south Pacific nation’s first general election since the government switched diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to Beijing and struck a secret security pact that has raised fears of the Chinese navy gaining a foothold in the region. The Solomon Islands’ closer relationship with China and a troubled domestic economy weighed on voters’ minds as they cast their ballots. As many as 420,000 registered voters had their say across 50 national seats. For the first time, the national vote also coincided with elections for eight of the 10 local governments. Esther Maeluma cast her vote in the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was