Responding to a disaster!

10 April 2007

Immediately after our recent earthquake/tsunami disaster, it was a straight forward thing to count up our dead, missing and injured. Finding out how many homes. houses, buildings and personal possessions the tsunami wave destroyed, although more difficult to work out, is being addressed as these lines are read. The hardest thing to figure out, however, is how best to
respond to victims personal losses, deep psychological hurts and their feelings of total devastation.

Of course the trauma-effected villagers' immediate physical needs--food, shelter, water, clothing, medicine--are continually being rushed to the affected sites by ship, launch, aircraft and helicopter. Now exactly a week after the disaster struck on 2 April at 7:40 in the morning, many of the above mentioned goods, services and personnel--overseas and local--are reaching out and touching the majority of the 6,000+ victims.

But deep traumatic scars villagers, especially children, experienced are only now slowly surfacing. Almost a week after our Big Shake--an 8.1 earthquake immediately followed by major tsunamis--Solomon Islands National Disaster Management Office (NDMO) continues to process the many reports flooding into its Honiara office lying east more than 200 miles from the
quake centre.

The earthquake by Richter Scale standards was really a severe shake and because the under ocean epicenter was so close to the surface--about 10 miles deep beneath the earth--large roller waves were almost immediately felt in the vicinity. No early warning signal of impending wave action could have been sent. In fact, Australia's eastern coast facing the Solomons, more
than 900 miles from us, felt the very same wave action less than 3 minutes after the first major tremor hit us. Imagine Solomons' villagers sitting less than 20 miles from the quake's epicenter!

Our death toll currently stands about 40 but, unfortunately, is on the rise. Missing people who were thought to have escaped to the hills behind the typical village are now too often being found under the debris of their collapsed homes and buildings. Our death toll would have been far higher, however, had not two factors played their part in keeping many of our village people from perishing.

Unlike the great Indian Ocean tsunami of 26 Dec. 2004, ours rushed ashore only minutes after the big shake at 7:40 when the vast majority of people were already out of their homes, getting ready for garden work, going about business and living the typical village life pattern. It was literally a life saving experience for them to actually see and feel the strange goings on of the ocean fronting their villages. Reefs, never before seen, now lay exposed. Erratic wave action--up and down the beach in rapid succession--put fear into people's hearts.

The second saving factor that proved helpful was the very word tsunami. This strange expression was no longer a foreign sounding word but one that carried deep meaning. Many had seen TV footage or at least had heard about the terrible events in the Indian Ocean only a few years back. It didn't take people more than a few seconds to put two and two together to what was happening as they stood mutely in front of a seething ocean. Mothers, fathers, uncles, aunts, older siblings, etc. snatched up the smallest of children, ran for their lives to higher ground without turning back to homes for extra clothing, food or anything else. Their most precious possessions, their kids, came first. All else was secondary.

The NDMO is also looking beyond the tsunami victims most pressing immediate needs--food, shelter, clothing, water, medicine, etc.--to the deep scars generated by the earthquake and devastating waves. As in the Indian Ocean tsunami victims, fishermen who had made their lives from the sea now feared it so much as to refuse to return to the sea, to go out fishing. What had
been their friend for many years, now, in a twinkling of an eye, had became a distrustful enemy.

Tsunami affected children are even more at risk. They do not have the words, the vocabulary, to describe their feelings, their hurts from this upsetting incidence. Specially trained trauma counselors will have to come in and be part of any emergency response team. At this moment, the NDMO is actively searching for just such persons. The serious wave action of last week may
have returned to the sea but its movement still swills around Western and Choiseul people's minds and hearts to this day.

J. Roughan
10 April 2007
Honiara