4 A Crash Course in Tsunami & Earthquake Response -  Island Aid's  beginnings KEY LESSONS LEARNED IN ACEH & NIAS When the mega quake and tsunami hit Aceh we were not shaken much in Padang. We heard from the Australian Honorary Consul in Medan how huge the quake had been and we turned on the TV. News started coming in from Phuket and Malaysia where the tourists were sending in reports of huge tsunamis ... then Sri Lanka.... there was no talk of Aceh and no news from up there at all. The reason was tragically simple. The quake and the huge waves has wiped out all the phone infrastructure.... and killed most of the people in its path who might otherwise have been able to spread the word or coordinate aid. It was days before we heard anything about Banda Aceh city (half destroyed) and Melaboh (70% destroyed). It was well over a week before we got some boats to the worst hit area and understood the enormity of what had happened on the west coast. LESSON 1 - TRANSPORT & COMMUNICATIONS FIRST First priority is to speed to the crisis area and establish a floating communications base to report on any huge seismic event. Land based infrastructure will be knocked out and there will be no word from anyone on the islands. The mainland will be hard hit as well so we need satellite coms on board to be independent of the local phone system. If that survives it will be overloaded and jammed for days or even weeks. It is critical to get the word out so that aid agencies and the military know where to go and what to send. Lautan Megah has VHF and a very powerful SSB radio system. In addition we will install a digital SSB all band radio and www capacity. Manufacturers are being approached with a request to donate both equipment and bandwidth. KM Lautan Mega can carry 20+ volunteers at 12 knots in any weather. LESSON 2 - SEARCH & RESCUE - FIRST RESPONDER CAPACITY In Aceh many thousands of people were swept out to sea by the waves. There was no one there to rescue them. Nobody. They hung onto debris and slowly drowned. Some survived for a week. This was a tragic and unacceptable situation and we cant let it happen again. We need to be ready to conduct search and rescue missions along the coast in the aftermath of a big tsunami. The ship with its small boats is the ideal platform. Island Aid has 4 heavy duty poly boats with a 2 ton capacity complete with outboard engines to act as ship to shore delivery craft. These boats are double skin and close to indestructible. They proved ideal in Aceh. Lautan Megah can stow all four boats (stacked) on her forward deck if required. In an emergency operation the boats would be towed astern and deployed in target villages while the ship makes over night resupply trips to the mainland. LESSON THREE - AIR SUPPORT IS CRITICAL In Aceh and Nias we teamed up with Operations Blessings and MAF and used helicopters for surveys and fixed wing aircraft for medical emergency evacuation and for volunteer transfers. Aircraft are idea for moving people and the ship could target aid more effectively with the aid of air surveys for rapid evaluation and deployment of medical intervention teams. Dr Derek Allen is both a surgeon and a helicopter pilot. His R22 two man helicopter is based in Telos and could reach the Lautan Megah within one hour of an emergency. We plan to modify the rear canopy to form a heli pad and we will be capable of carrying fuel to support the helicopter operation for extended periods. The R22 is one of the most fuel efficient helicopters available and it is ideal for evaluation. Fixed wing aircraft can land at Rokot or Telos airstrips and they could take over medivac cases from these locations. LESSON FOUR - MEDICAL CAPACITY AND SUPPLIES TAKE TIME TO MOBILIZE We can carry doctors and nurses and can set up an emergency operating theatre on board. We work with Dr Derek Allen of www.troppodoc.com who is working in the Telos and available to join the ship on short notice. We have approximately 1,500 kg of medical supplies ready in Padang and we have been supplying Dr Derek's ongoing needs. We are working with CVS Disaster Supplies http://www.cvsdisastersupplies.com/ to prepare "Emergency Doctor Support Kits" ready for deployment at short notice. LESSON FIVE - TOOLS & EQUIPMENT CAN SAVE LIVES After the quake in Nias people were trapped in fallen buildings for days .... up to a week because there was no equipment to lift heavy items, no power for tools and no one to coordinate rescue efforts. We will carry tripods and chainblocks, sledge hammers, crowbars, chainsaws and hydraulic jacks to areas where they can save lives. Helicopters are pretty useless at this job because they cant carry these heavy items. We also have the capacity to carry trail bikes and even small bobcat type excavators if warranted. In Nias our 3 motor bikes were vital to reach inland villages where roads were cut and bridges down. In Mentawai there are forestry roads in Pagai but most other islands are accessible only by boat. We can carry up to 26 tons of fuel and that is sufficient to supply most large towns and villages in the Mentawais during an emergency. LESSON SIX - WATER FIRST THEN FOOD & CLOTHING Survivors of mega events like this have lost everything. They often have only the clothes they are wearing and no food or water. Ground wells are flooded with salt water and debris, supplies are all destroyed. In Aceh people had to walk 4 or 5 km to even reach landscape that was not destroyed to find springs for drinking water. People in the mountains walked 12 km to get food from aid posts along the coast. We can carry a lot of drinking water in our tanks and we can make water with a reverse osmosis machine to provide drinking water for many hundreds or even thousands of survivors. It is very expensive to fly water by helicopters and in Aceh and Nias the choppers were of limited use because they were operating at the limit of their range and so had to sacrifice payload for extra fuel. There are no fuel supplies for helicopters in Mentawai and so they will face the same problem.  LESSON SEVEN - DONT UNDERESTIMATE TRAUMA Trauma victims most of all need comfort and human company. They need to talk about what they have been through. Many will have lost their entire family and in some cases their entire neighborhood. We can be there on the ground for these people. Again helicopter aid (the conventional response) is useless because they just drop food and water and then disappear. There is no contact. I cant stress how vital human contact is in the hours, days and weeks after the devastation of a community. Conventional aid agencies tend to ignore this aspect of disaster relief because they cant get enough volunteers or aid workers into the field safely and most of all because they cant house them anywhere near the disaster zone. We can provide safe and secure accommodation for up to 30 volunteer workers close to the areas where needs are greatest. LESSON EIGHT - FOOD QUALITY & VARIETY NOT JUST QUANTITY Food becomes a serious issue within 36 to 48 hrs of a disaster and we have learned that the best solution is to have a supplier of "Emergency Startup Kits" ready to supply large numbers as soon as donor funds or aid agencies can mobilize funds. In the case of Aceh we used our own money because the Australian Govt team arrived in Padang without any funds!! Amazing but true. The larger the aid organization, the slower they are to move funds is the rule.  We work with Sam Schultz (IDEP and Island Aid lead volunteer) who has established a company here to provide this service CVS Disaster Supplies http://www.cvsdisastersupplies.com/ Items included: Rice, flour, cooking oil, coffee, tea, sugar, chili sauce, soap, a small tarp, candles, knives, cooking pot, hand towel, lighters, noodles and many others. LESSON EIGHT - SURVIVING BUILDINGS CAN KILL After massive earthquakes and/or tsunamis, the buildings that are not destroyed by the ocean are often so badly damaged that they are dangerous to occupy. Aftershocks often kill people who are trying to salvage possessions, clothing and blankets from the rubble of their homes. The aftershocks go on for weeks and in our area for months. Nobody wants to sleep inside a building. Everyone wants to sleep in tents or under tarps. In tsunami areas everyone moves to hill tops nearby and they need material to set up shelters, latrines and drinking water supplies. Our ship can effectively deliver large numbers of tents and tarps and "Construction Tool Kits" for building temporary shelter to small communities where there is no port or road infrastructure or where bridges and roads have been destroyed.  LESSON NINE - HYGENE GETS FORGOTTEN Quakes and tsunamis destroy homes and toilets are rendered useless. Often septic tanks flood and spead contamination everywhere on the ground. Sanitation becomes critical within a few days of a disaster. Earth latrines must be excavated by hand and water piped to them. (Indonesians dont use paper and to go to the toilet without a bucket of water is unthinkable) We bring basic sanitation supplies in addition to those supplied in the "Emergency Startup Kits". LESSON TEN - PARTNER WITH OTHERS We do not attempt to do all this alone. One of the key strategies that made our Batavia mission so effective was the partnering and teamwork we fostered among other NGOs and UN agencies. We carried WHO medical kits, WFP food supplies, IDEP family buckets, medial teams from many local and international NGOs, CARE sanitation supplies and volunteers from over 40 organizations. In an emergency we offer this service free of charge but many of our partner organizations donated funds for fuel and almost all contributed towards food and living costs. Partnering has made it possible for Island Aid to do follow up medical support in communities where we have made life long friends. In Nias we have been focusing our efforts in Gomo sub-regency. We raise funds for university education and for operations for victims we have identified during our emergency work. Island Aid raised money for plastic surgery for two terribly disfigured girls in Nias. They were badly burned in a refugee tent fire. Both are now well on their way in life and have full mobility. http://www.notseennotheard.com LESSON ELEVEN - WE NEED A SHIP THAT IS SUSTAINABLE  IN "DISASTER READINESS MODE" This is the key to our strategy. We will harvest tourism income by providing a service that nobody else is capable of. There are other local private ferry boats here but they use poorly built local wooden boats. They are uncomfortable and downright dangerous and most top surf tour operators dont trust them. Our little ship is extremely well built and set up to survive typhoons in the North Pacific. She will never be tested like that here but she is big and will smooth out the worst conditions we see in our area with ease. She is fuel efficient and built for heavy duty commercial hard work. There is nothing else in our area that comes close so we are very confident that we will get the full support of the industry.  We are core members of the Mentawai Marine Tourism Association (http://www.mmta-mentawai.org) a non profit organization representing all the licensed resorts and the 30 boat charter fleet that work in Mentawai. The MMTA have undertaken to fund a range of community programs to bring the benefits of tourism to as many communities as possible. The MMTA will encourage all members to use our supply boat service to carry  both guests and supplies in and out to the islands. In this way, wealthy surfers will support the daily running costs and based on our projections, the service will earn a substantial surplus of revenue. The MMTA will work with Island Aid to implement village programs such as clean water, public toilets, rubbish management and internet access at schools. The surplus revenue will be used to fund our support programs in the field, so saving us the overhead of seeking institutional donors funding. Island Aid has 501 (c) (3) status in the USA and we will operate the ship and pay a token charter fee to the company we are setting up to own the vessel. This protects the 'soft investors' who are providing the funds to buy and upgrade the vessel from any claim by 3rd parties. That is only fair as the soft investors are not expecting any dividend in cash terms so they deserve total protection from risk.  Their dividend will be the satisfaction of seeing our field work bring real results and to a lesser extent the visibility of their logos to the public via media exposure that we orchestrate. So far we have raised $50,000 of our target $200,000. Some supporters elected to claim a donation tax receipt. This allows Island Aid to increase it's equity in the ship. Others elected to invest their funds. The 'soft investors' who supported us will be refunded at the end of a ten year charter term. No interest or dividend will be paid nor is that expected. The investors capital will be returned. They will have donated the use of the money or the cost of the money depending on how you look at it. LESSON 12 - DISASTER READINESS PROGRAMS CAN SAVE LIVES & SUFFERING Some of the on-going projects we will be supporting during our "Disaster Readiness" phase include: COMMUNITY PROJECTS - Tsunami Arks in villages where hills are too far away or impossible to reach. - Multi Purpose Community Structures - Children's Internet Access - Artisanal Boat Building programs - Virgin Coconut Oil production and bio-diesel from low grade by product. - Coco (Chocolate) plantations on tsunami vulnerable low coastal areas - Seaweed harvesting - Fruit and Vegetable gardens for supply to resorts and boats RECONSTRUCTION PROJECTS There is a lot of reconstruction work and tsunami mitigation education and infrastructure needed. We expect to be called on by the Mentawai Government to help implement new housing projects in the worst hit villages. We are not set up as a cargo boat but we can carry skilled volunteers and all the tools needed to build earthquake safe housing on high ground. This would be the best option for communities who are close enough to hills to make the move feasible. REFORESTATION & CONSERVATION PROGRAMS We are negotiating with one of London's top hotels at the moment. They want to purchase over 500 Ha of degraded forest land on an island near one of our resorts and replant it. A new twist on carbon trading you could say. Forest rehabilitation and conservation makes more sense to them than spending millions on upgrading their historic building carcass to gain marginal improvements in energy efficiency. For less money they can rejuvenate a substantial area of humid rain forest along with its wild life and at the same time provide dignified employment for local communities doing what they know how to do best... act as guardians of the trees they revere as possessing the spirits of their ancestors. ARE THE MENTAWAI ISLANDERS LIVING IN A SUSTAINABLE LIFESTYLE? Recent fuel price hikes have crippled the economy. The government banned logging 2 years ago but pressure is mounting start clear felling the precious rain forests of Siberut and the other islands again. Tourism is the best chance the island communities have of avoiding the ongoing theft of their most valuable resource .... a resource so unique that Siberut Island (largest of the Mentawai Islands) has been declared a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. http://www.unesco.or.id/activities/inter/199.php  One of Professor James Lovelock's key recommendations is to empower indigenous communities to protect humid rain forest .... the lungs of the planet and storehouses of bio-diversity and endangered species. Read the text of his very terrifying lecture "Climate change on the living Earth" hhttp://royalsociety.org/page.asp?id=7250 Our mission is clear......