Tuesday evening, January
4. Jakarta
So far, everything is coming up roses with respect to getting
our official travel permits from the scientific organization
LIPI, the political offices (Sospol), and the national police
(PolRI).
Yesterday we had a press conference at the headquarters of Pasifik
Satelit Nusantara, a private company that is partnering with us
to develop telemetry (satellite-based telecommunication). About
60 print and television journalists attended to listen to Danny
and me explain the science of the megathrust that produced the
December 26 earthquake. Many stations broadcast the conference.
One station caused a panic in Padang by editing Danny's comments
in such as way as to make it sound as if we thought a giant tsunami
was imminent there. Danny was scheduled to go on national TV tonight,
live and uneditable, to attempt to quell concerns. We are going
to be in Padang and on the nearby islands in less than a week,
so obviously we think the likelihood of another giant earthquake
and tsunami is very small.
Yesterday we also met with a prominent former minister and a former
ambassador to discuss the trouble in Padang and to discuss the
longer-term problem of how to mitigate the effects of the eventual
earthquake and tsunami there. We also met with the head of LIPI
to discuss our desire to reconnoiter the stricken area by helicopter
rather than by boat and on foot. Today, the heads of the office,
Pak Jan and Pak Umar, told us that they have arranged with the
military to move us around in a helicopter for the time that we
are in Aceh. We need to firm this up and discuss the particulars
tomorrow.
For our downloading of SuGAr stations south of the equator, we
contracted today with a private helicopter company to take us to
the island stations between January 9 and 12. It will be strange
to see from a fast helicopter the islands that we have visited
so many times by slow boat. Today, while calculating our itinerary,
I could not get used to the fact that distances that usually take
us 12 hours to traverse by sea will only take us an hour or so
by air.
We learned that two teams of surveyors from Bakosurtanal were
flying today to Nias island, west of Sumatra, to begin their resurvey
of the campaign GPS monuments of Yehuda Bock and his colleagues,
scientists with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. I'm sure
they will recover spectacular evidence of deformation from the
region of the earthquake.
We have pretty much decided to install the four new continuous
GPS stations on Nias and Simeuleu islands, and on the mainland
Aceh coast, to monitor post-seismic transients. (Because the earth's
crust is elastic, it will rise or fall during an earthquake. Then,
over a period of years it will rebound, or return to some degree,
with respect to its original position.) Originally, these new stations
were to go in south of the Equator, to densify the existing network.
The meeting with the vice president of Indonesia today (Tuesday)
lasted over an hour. We explained the potential scientific value
of the continuous GPS network for monitoring the "heartbeat" of
the Sumatran megathrust and suggested an international meeting
within a month or two to bring together scientists from around
the world who were working on various aspects of the earthquake
and its effects. The vice president asked about the value of an
early detection and warning system for tsunamis. We suggested that
it would be in the best interests of the Indonesian people to make
sure that such a system for the Bay of Bengal be able to issue
a warning within a minute or so, since the tsunami could arrive
on the shores of western Sumatra and its islands within just minutes
of the occurrence of the earthquake.
On a personal note, what a joy it was yesterday evening to treat
myself to a short jog on the treadmill and a little bit of exercise
after a day driving around Jakarta in taxi cabs and being in meetings!
No such luck tonight - the meetings weren't over until after 10
p.m.
It appears that we will arrive in Padang on January 7 and fly
out to the islands on the 8th.
Thursday morning, January 6. Jakarta
Dear Colleagues and Friends,
Yesterday afternoon, the hotel was flooded with delegates to the
international conference on relief for the earthquake and tsunami
victims. All are walking around with big placards on their chests,
color-coded to indicate the country they represent. Earlier in
the week I was nearly alone on the fifth floor of the hotel. Now
I share it with the Myanmar delegation and two Indonesian security
officers, who are in the hallway all day and night to protect them.
They look pretty bored, so I talk to them in my very broken Indonesian
as I'm coming and going, to make their day a little more interesting.
Logistics are in their final stages. Rifki, from PSN, the satellite
communications company, just brought us two more satellite phones
so the various subgroups of the team can keep in contact with each
other during the helicopter downloads on the islands. Our Caltech
colleague John Galetzka, who is almost always in the field taking
care of equipment and field logistics for us, is stuck in Singapore
trying to get his visa in less than the typical two-day turnaround.
The chairman of LIPI, the Indonesian Institute of Science, sent
a special letter to the embassy yesterday afternoon, pleading that
the visa granting be expedited, since John's participation in our
work in the stricken region is essential to our success. Looks
like it's not going to happen, anyway. I just met with Cecep, the
Indonesian geodesist from Bakosurtanal (Indonesia's national surveying
agency) and with Scripps's Yehuda Bock's principal collaborator,
to coordinate our GPS work. We'll do the continuous measurements;
he'll focus on reoccupation of the old monuments that Yehuda's
group surveyed back in the 1990s. They will see huge changes across
northern Sumatra, I'm sure; we'll see small changes, since the
Sumatran GPS Array (SuGAr) network is more than 300 kilometers
(185 miles) south of the rupture area.
Yesterday a few geologists forwarded me an article by a reporter
who had interviewed me before I left Caltech. I was amazed to learn
that someone could do such a thorough job of misrepresenting what
I had said, even to the point of inventing quotations. I guess
the hunger to dramatize and sensationalize is as strong as the
desire to eat.
When I woke this morning, I found in my e-mail inbox a message
from one of my friends in Padang, a city of nearly a million people
on the western coast of Sumatra. It is in a setting not unlike
that of Meulaboh, the western Aceh city that was devastated by
the tsunami. It is directly landward of the giant earthquakes that
we have been studying using coral reefs and GPS, and has a history
of giant tsunamis. The most recent big ones were in 1833 and 1797.
Madi, my friend, is a young guy who works in the hotel where our
group often stays. He earns about a dollar a day making up rooms
and doing other tasks there.
Here is his e-mail to me:
"kerry apa kabar, you know i' am afraid if the happent
come here, i'm not care about myself, but my parents and sister,
you know the tsunamis issue will come here many people say like
that now, so my father got accident last week, his left feet
was broken, it's very hard to me, I hope you can give me about
the information, what will happent here after that, I know you
are very busy with this situation, so I saw you in metro tv yesterday
with mr. Denny, thanks kerry, see you madi"
For the past four days, there has been much panic among the residents
of Padang because they fear that a tsunami may be imminent. We
are hearing reports that some people, like Madi's father, have
actually been injured. One reason for the panic is that people
don't realize that any such tsunami would be presaged by a very
large earthquake.
Our posters and brochures and our lectures in churches and schools
have thus far been restricted to the islands offshore of Padang,
where the towns are small and it is easier to educate people. We
had been in discussions with the authorities in Padang last July
and August about how best to educate this much larger population.
The situation is particularly difficult because there is no way,
even with a 15-minute warning from the earthquake itself, that
most of the city's inhabitants could escape landward.
On the scientific front, I was excited to get a report from Joann
Stock, my colleague and fellow geology professor at Caltech who's
been on sabbatical in Japan. She sent a report filed by Roger Bilham
(a geophysicist at the University of Colorado), stating that in
India's Andaman islands, located in the southeastern part of the
Bay of Bengal, the west coast of the islands appears to have risen
and the east coast submerged during the earthquake. This would
mean that the rupture did, indeed, propagate as far north as the
Andamans. This must be considered good news for the residents along
the coasts of the Bay of Bengal, because it means that most of
the subduction zone between Myanmar and northern Sumatra ruptured
during the earthquake (Myanmar is roughly 634 kilometers--390 miles--from
northern Sumatra). Thus, the likelihood of another giant tsunami
is probably not very high. Caltech seismologist Chen Ji also forwarded
a report stating that an island in the Nicobar chain, located near
to the Andamans, rose 3 meters, almost ten feet, exposing the coral.
Both of these reports describe landward tilting of the outer-arc
islands, just like we see in the ancient corals off West and North
Sumatra during large earthquakes there in 1797, 1833, and 1935.
I was delighted and relieved to have an e-mail from our Mentawai
(islands) friend, Juniator Tulius, yesterday evening, saying that
he and his wife had just arrived in Padang from the islands safe
and sound. He reports that a small tsunami occurred at the town
of Saibi after the earthquake, but that it didn't even flood the
houses. He also said that he and the villagers didn't even feel
the earthquake. He also reports no damage or loss of life in the
towns of Tuapejit or Sioban, on the east side of Sipora island,
another in the Mentawai chain. But he has heard no word from villages
on the west coast of the islands. Caltech's John Galetzka said
today that he felt the earthquake hundreds of miles away to the
north, near the Burmese/Thai border. And an American friend of
mine, who runs a hotel on the harbor in Padang, said over the phone
to a reporter that she saw the tide flow out rapidly after the
earthquake. I'm sure we'll have many more stories to tell once
we get to the islands.
Friday night, January 7, Padang Hotel,
Padang, Indonesia
I have finally left Jakarta for the west coast of Sumatra. The
rest of the crew follows on Saturday morning. The first good
news of the day was that Caltech's John Galetzka, who takes care
of our equipment, got his visa in Singapore and will be arriving
in Jakarta in the early afternoon. Bambang, our main logistics
guy, was nervous about being able to get the two requisite permits
from government offices late on a Friday afternoon.
Stepping off our 737 at the airport in Padang, I saw a familiar
scene--a dozen porters in green overalls ready to pounce as we
entered the terminal and began the raucous process of claiming
our baggage. After I found my bags, I waded through the crowd and
found our long-time assistant, Imam, and his wife, Susi, waiting
for me. We loaded my baggage into the "Imam-mobile," his
old clunker that miraculously still functions, and we were on our
way to the little white Padang hotel. We are staying in the one-story
part of the hotel, about a kilometer from the beach. Our old favorite,
the Tiga-Tiga Hotel, burned about a year ago. It was only about
500 meters (500 yards) from the beach, across the street from the
main bus terminal. The bus terminal was moved to a more remote
location on the edge of the city about two years ago, and now I
see that an enormous new marketplace is being built in its place.
It is four stories tall and made of the standard materials--concrete
pillars and beams, with an abundance of fill-in brick. I see a
shear wall running perpendicular to the beach, but I have no idea
how the building will fare in a giant earthquake.
Our first snag this afternoon came when we attempted to change
U.S. dollars to rupiah (Indonesian currency), for buying the food
that we will need for the next couple of weeks on the islands.
The current rate for rupiah is 9,200 per U.S. dollar. The clerk
leafed through the $3,500 of brand new $50 bills and inspected
them carefully. I stood there smugly, knowing they were pristine
and without any marks, folds, or minor tears that would lower the
exchange rate. She looked at me and casually announced that she
would have to lower the rate by 3 percent because the serial numbers
all began with "CB." I refused to cash them, even though
I knew it was too late to go to a bank. I asked what other serial
numbers were suspect of being counterfeit, and she said only ones
beginning with "CB." So back we went to the hotel and
retrieved a similar amount of $100 bills, for which we got the
9,200 rate.
I went to visit my friends at the Batu Arau Hotel, a beautiful
structure that used to be a Dutch bank. It sits about a kilometer
in from the sea on the north bank of the filthy river that serves
as a harbor for fishing boats and surf charters. Christina and
Chris Fowler run a surf charter and hotel/restaurant from there.
There were a couple of people from Bali at the hotel, organizing
relief efforts. Christina was overjoyed to see me and threw her
arms around me, exclaiming something like, "You warned us,
you told us, and it was just like you said!"
I broke my self-imposed silence with the media (too many requests
for interviews and just not enough time) and e-mailed a reply to
a reporter in Banda Aceh. The reason is that our attempts to find
air support to survey the region along the west coast of Aceh,
both north and south of Meulaboh, have not borne fruit. So I am
interested in the possibility that we might hook up with a media
person who has access.
We are fine now as far as getting to Simeuleu Island, off the
west coast of Sumatra, with our helicopter and boat support. But
this still doesn't help us get an aerial recon of the west coast.
So, after about January 13 or 14, our transportation is still up
in the air.
I'm anxious to get to the islands to start our research. From
now on, though, communication will be limited to satellite phone.
6 a.m., Sunday, January 9. Padang Hotel,
Padang, Sumatra
Restless night here, anticipating our departure for the islands
off the west coast of Sumatra. Caltech's John Galetzka, our equipment/logistics
guy, left the room at 2 a.m., to begin the six-hour drive south
to the Sumatran town of Muko-Muko. Joining him are Felix (the
technician/engineer from ACeS, the satellite telecom company
we are working with), and Bambang, our other logistics person.
They will download the two GPS stations down there, and at about
11 will fly in two helicopters. Bambang will go to the Silabu
GPS station on the west coast of North Pagai Island, and John
and Felix to the Perak Batu station on the east coast of South
Pagai Island. We have two helicopters because an Australian TV
crew rented one to follow us around for a couple days. Now they
don't need the helicopter until the afternoon, because they are
coming over with us in the speedboat loaned to us by the local
Bupati (the equivalent to a county supervisor).
The helicopter fuel for operating on the islands had not yet arrived
by midnight last night, so Imam, our boat captain, and the crew
of our big boat will wait until it arrives before leaving the harbor
for the 14-hour trip to Sikakap (a town of about 1,500 people on
North Pagai Island). The big boat will be accompanying us up the
island chain, carrying the fuel for the helicopter and providing
our food, fresh water, and beds.
My colleague Danny Natawidjaja and I leave at 7 a.m. for Teluk
Bungkus, the big harbor an hour to the south of Padang, where we'll
board the Bupati's speedboat with the TV crew. We expect to arrive
at Silabu by about 11:30 a.m., about the time that Bambang will
arrive by helicopter.
Last night I took one of our educational posters (about earthquakes
and possible tsunamis) over to the Batang Arau hotel at the harbor,
which is run by my friends Christina and Chris Fowler. Christina
had told me she'd really like to have another one, now that the
tsunami has happened.
She had just spoken with Chris via satellite phone. He is distributing
relief supplies to the villages of the west side of Nias Island,
which were hit very hard by the waves. He reports several hundred
deaths and, in some villages, a nearly complete loss of their fishing
fleet and, hence, livelihood. At his recommendation, Imam and our
helper Susi are buying a range of antibiotics (you can get them
over the counter here) and fishing materials (nets, fish hooks,
and line). Yesterday Susi was intent on buying dozens of pairs
of ladies' underwear to distribute. She was very concerned that
they would be in short supply of this item. When I asked why not
mens' as well, she said men don't need them as much! So anyway,
I guess we'll be distributing ladies' underwear as part of our
little relief effort. (The things I do in the course of trying
to do science!!)
At about 5:30 this morning the screeching from the minarets began
here in town, calling the faithful to prayer. It is an indication
that everything here in this very vulnerable city has gone back
to the normal cycle of a normal day. The images of the disaster
in Aceh continue to flood the local and national television channels,
but people have by and large resumed their lives, as if nothing
had happened. Yesterday, in the business center of the Bumi Minang
Hotel, where I went to send my last e-mails, the girl who runs
the office recognized me from a national television interview a
few days ago. She asked me if I was staying at the hotel. When
I said no, she asked why. I just bit my lower lip gently, to keep
from saying something that might frighten her. She saw my hesitation
and sensed that I was not comfortable answering. She managed to
drag out of me that I felt the hotel was too close to the water
and too big of a structure for me to feel safe spending a lot of
time there (in the event of a large aftershock and a possible tsunami).
Her playful mood became more somber. Later I learned from Danny
that she had asked him the same questions and his answers had been
the same as mine. I wonder how in the coming years we are going
to approach the massive educational program that will be necessary
to help the citizens of the large cities and villages along the
coast to figure out how to cope with their problem.
1:30 p.m., Sikakap, principal town of the Pagai Islands
It only took about five hours to cross the Mentawai straits to
Sikakap on North Pagai Island (the Bupati's boat cruises at an
amazing 20 knots, whereas our usual boat only goes about 10 knots
or so). Many of our old friends greeted us as we walked through
the town to reserve rooms in Pak Edi's hotel (the Wisma Lestari)
and find a restaurant for a quick lunch.
I was surprised to see no evidence of the tsunami here. A young
guy with yellow plaster on his face, sitting on a tugboat, hailed
me. Oops, I've forgotten his name; maybe it's Frizal, the guy in
charge of the fishermen's' harbor. I think he said he was on the
tugboat at the time and that the water poured over the wharf and
into the grassy field between the wharf and the street. That suggests
a surge about a meter (three feet) above high tide. Our two most
reliable friends told us what happened. Pak Edi says that the tsunami
started with a withdrawal of the sea and rose up to the middle
of the highest step of his house. I judge that to be about two
meters above mean tide, but I'll have to pin this down a little
better tonight. (My later measurements show that the maximum height
was about 70 centimeters, a little more than two feet, above the
sea level before the tsunami.) The biggest surge came at about
3 p.m. here. My friends Devi and her husband, Abeng, told me that
the surge nearly filled the gully beside her house, but did not
go into the street. I walked to the waterfront there and estimate
that this would have been about a meter above the current water
level. Pak Edi says the surge came during high tide. So, at first
glance, it appears to me that the surge was only a meter or so,
much less than in Padang.
Off to Silabu now, on the west coast of North Pagai Island, cruising
through rough, choppy swells.
We arrived late by speedboat at the mouth of the small mangrove-lined
river that leads to Silabu. It only took us about an hour and a
half to find a longboat to get us the two kilometers (mile-plus)
up the river, say hello to our friends, and meet Bambang and the
helicopter. We arrived at the village at about 4:15 p.m. with the
unusually high tide still rising over the grassy embankment. Every
time I emerge from the mangroves to the little wooden homes, pigsties,
and wharves of Silabu, I feel like I've entered the riverbank of
The Wind in the Willows! So quaint and peaceful. Patroni and Suardi
greeted us, two of the friends we made last August when we installed
the GPS instrument, along with a coterie of small kids and mothers.
We learned that the tsunami arrived at about 3 p.m. as a draining
of the river. The river is probably about two meters deep and was
drained completely dry. Five minutes later or so, it filled again
but did not top the banks. Ebbing and filling happened many times
in the course of the day. The return of the water up the river
brought an abundance of dead fish. I'm guessing that the draining
of the fresh water into the bay killed the salt-water fish, which
were then swept back in with the refilling of the river.
Everyone was all smiles as we walked along the concrete sidewalk
through the town. Bambang had arrived an hour before in the helicopter
and was downloading data. Patroni walked with us up from the river
to the GPS station, all the while telling us that all the villagers
felt that our instrument had saved them from harm. We were thankful
that they had such a good opinion of us and our instrument, but
reminded them that the instrument was just that--an instrument,
not a protection--and if they ever feel a big earthquake they must
immediately run to the high ground in the church yard, where the
instrument is. Nonetheless, Patroni re-affirmed that we and the
instrument had been sent by God, just in time. Otherwise, how could
both Bambang and we have arrived within an hour of each other--us
by boat and him by helicopter?
We put the three guys in our group who were prone to seasickness
on the helicopter for the return flight to Sikakap, while we went
back to the boat for the return ride. Good decision--the chop made
it a bit harrowing to get to the speedboat in the dugout, but here
we are out in sea in a choppy two-meter swell, motoring back to
town. Just dove into a huge one, in fact, that bent the railing
on the bow. We're all a bit nervous.
1:20 p.m., Monday, January 10. Wisma Lestari
(a small hotel at the waterfront in Sikakap)
We have been frustrated by the choppy seas all morning, unable
to leave safely for Perak Batu, a village on the east coast of
South Pagai Island, where we have an instrument. Since our big
boat was unable to cross from Padang yesterday, because of the
choppy seas, we have only enough helicopter fuel to make one
trip back and forth from P.B. The TV crew needs to film us there,
but we can't take them and us on the same trip. So an hour ago
we decided to have their crew cross the strait in a boat, rent
motorcycles, and drive as far as they can toward P.B. on the
logging road that cuts southward along the ridge crest of the
island. Three of us will fly down and be deposited at P.B., then
the helicopter will pick up the motorcyclers nearby. Should be
able to do everything before dark.
This noon, as I ate lunch at a small family restaurant, I watched
on television the terrifying images of the tsunami surging through
Banda Aceh, chock full of cars, and wood, and other debris. I looked
around at the dozen or so men, women, and children around me and
started to tear up. Are they going to be the next victims, when
the great Mentawai earthquake happens? It's much easier to take
if you don't know the victims. If you have gotten to know many
of them, and then they are swept away in a tsunami or crushed in
a collapsing building, how do you cope? The grief of the people
of Aceh must be immeasurable.
We have been telling people here to take three steps to deal with
the possibilities here: 1) don't panic. It is unlikely that anything
good will come from irrational behavior. And besides, we are here,
so obviously we don't think anything will happen in the immediate
future. 2) Know how to flee. Figure out how you will flee to the
hills if you feel a very strong earthquake. That will be easy for
most of the residents here, because there is a tall hill with many
paths right behind the town. 3) Figure out what to do about the
long-term problem. Have community meetings to discuss whether to
move the town to higher ground or to be willing to accept the losses
and rebuild if the shaking and tsunami destroy the town.
10:20 a.m., Tuesday, January 11. On the
boat in Sikakap harbor
Yesterday we were able to get to the Perak Batu site and collect
the data as planned, but barely got out before dark, and before
high tide washed over the helicopter landing pad on the beach.
Our friends in the small village were astonished and thrilled
to have a helicopter land in front of their little town. Dozens
of wonderful, cheering kids and mothers. But the men were off
at work in the jungle and didn't come back until about 4:30.
They came back early because they saw the chopper land.
The seas are calmer today, so we will be able to depart for Tuapejat,
our next site a few kilometers to the north. To conserve helicopter
fuel we have decided to download that station by arriving by boat
and to have the helicopter leap-frog on to the Sinyang-nyang site
on a small island off the south coast of Siberut Island. The boat
and helicopter will rendezvous at Malepet, a small harbor on the
east coast of Siberut, tonight.
We are delayed this morning, because the local head (camat) and
police chief have requested a meeting with us to discuss their
concerns about a future earthquake and tsunami. The meeting was
supposed to be at 8 a.m., but the ferryboat carrying them from
Padang to Sikakap was delayed by the bad weather yesterday. If
we don't get out of here until 2 p.m. or so, we'll suffer another
day's delay in our plans.
There are many stories to tell of meeting our friends in Perak
Batu and here in Sikakap, but the time to write is just too short.
Just one short note. My friend Pak Edi has lived at the Wisma Lestari
Hotel for 53 years. He says that high tides used to flood the courtyard
about once a year. But since the Bengkulu earthquake in 2000, the
high tides come into the courtyard every month. I wonder if this
indicates merely that the man-made fill of coral rubble settled
during the earthquake, or that there was some slow slip on the
megathrust outboard of the islands! Too bad our GPS network had
not yet been installed in 2000. Actually, Yehuda's network (Yehuda
Bock from Scripps) could be resurveyed to see if anything odd happened
up here at the time of the 2000 earthquake.
Wednesday morning, January 12. Tuapejat
The boat and helicopter left the harbor at Sikakap, the principal
town of the Pagai Islands, at the same time yesterday, as did
the TV crew helicopter. They returned to Padang, Sumatra, via
Muko-Muko (another town, south of Padang), while we headed north
along the east coast of North Pagai, toward Tuapejat, a town
of a couple of thousand people on the northern tip of Sipora
Island. We are now about two days behind the original schedule.
Bambang Suwargadi, my colleague who handles logistics, and I were
to land at the Pulau Panjang GPS site, just a kilometer or so east
of the town, and perform the first download of that station. But
to our surprise, someone had stolen the receiver, batteries, and
solar panel. We spent the afternoon reporting the loss to the Bupati's
office (a local official) and then to the police who are in charge
of Sipora Island. We asked the Mayor to bring the landowner to
see us, so that we could find out the circumstances. Bambang stressed
to the authorities that this was the sole instrument on Sipora,
so that now we have no way of knowing what is going on beneath
the island.
I couldn't reach the boat by satellite phone this morning, but
it is safe to assume that they arrived in Malepet (a harbor on
the east coast of Siberut Island, to our north) early this morning.
The plan is that Bambang and I will download the Sinyang-nyang
station off the south coast of Siberut, while the boat team downloads
the Saibi station and installs the new telemetry equipment.
We are sitting in a small cafe next to our little hotel. The complex
of three buildings has been constructed right on the modern beach,
as have dozens of homes and businesses here. I took a photo of
one building that tilts toward the sea because the sand under it
is being eroded away by the waves. Most of the town is less than
a meter (about three feet) or so above sea level. In fact, we've
been told before that during very high tides the main street actually
floods, like Balboa Island in Newport Beach.
The young couple who live in the room next to ours has three small
children. I don't see how they will escape if they are here when
a tsunami strikes. It would be fairly easy to construct broad walkways
perpendicular to the shoreline up onto the higher ground just behind
the town.
Last night I took my usual stroll to clear my mind before turning
in for the night. I walked the better part of a kilometer along
the main drag, which parallels the beach. The stars were spectacularly
bright and the sound of the small surf would have been calming
under different circumstances. A group of about 15 fishermen sitting
on a porch called me over to join them. They ranged in age from
about 18 to 35, I'd guess. They knew that if they felt a big earthquake,
they should run for the hills. They said they could get there within
30 minutes. I told them they might have only 15. They didn't know
what to do if they were on the water during a big earthquake. So
I told them to try to get to deeper water.
10 a.m. Sinyang-nyang site
We left the Bupati's office at Tuapejat about an hour and a half
ago, then flew across the Sipora Strait to Nyang-nyang Island.
What a beautiful site this is! High on a hill, overlooking the
archipelago of small islands off the southeast coast of Siberut
Island. We were delighted to see that the instruments are intact
and have been recording since we left them in September. We'll
finish the download of data at about noon.
A young woman named Martena and two young boys walked up to meet
us a few minutes after we landed. She is Thaddeus's daughter. He
owned land in this area but was killed by three men last December,
because he would not sell the land to someone who wanted to build
a resort here. The men are now in custody. The owner of the particular
piece of land that the instrument is on is Petros. Bambang will
give the maintenance money to Martena to give to Petros.
Two guys in their late 20s and 30s came up toward the end of the
three-hour download. They said there had been oscillations of the
sea from about 11 a.m. to about 6 p.m. on the day of the earthquake.
They say it was low tide when it began, and that the first surge
came up about a meter, to near the normal high-tide mark. They
didn't know whether the first effect was a withdrawal or a rise
of the sea.
10 a.m., Thursday, January 14, en route
from Lebuan Bajou to Tello on the big boat
Bambang and I flew from the Nyang-nyang site over the large
north-south bay of southern Siberut Island late yesterday morning
en route to Malepet, on the east coast of Siberut. It was nearly
low tide during our transit, so we could inspect the intertidal
zone. Fields of coral microatolls are abundant in the southern
third of the bay but the northern two-thirds is a mudflat.
Our big boat had left two 50-gallon barrels of fuel in a soccer
field near Malepet, so that we could refuel. We left the helicopter
running during refueling, and a large crowd from the community
gathered around. I recognized one longhaired character who came
up to greet me. He is named Su, and we met here a few years ago,
when we were in the area collecting coral samples. He is about
27 or so, and still looking for work. I forgot to ask about the
tsunami there.
Continuing north, we flew over vast tracks of virgin jungle, with
the double canopy of high, white-barked dipterocarps (tall, rain
forest trees) and understory of shorter trees. What a joy to see
that so much of the forest here has not been logged by the big
timber companies. At least a small part of the Mentawai Islands
might yet remain pristine.
We overtook our big boat just 10 kilometers or so south of our
next stop, at Muarasaibi. Our equipment is on a hill overlooking
this village of several hundred Mentawai people. We've become good
friends with many of them, since we first installed the GPS station
there. David Satoko is the owner of the land on which the station
sits, and he takes extraordinarily good care of the site, keeping
the weeds down. He has even built a little bamboo shelter for us
during our downloads.
Last August, our friend Tulik, who is from Saibi, showed Caltech's
Catharine Stebbins and me the evidence for coastal erosion and
submergence in the water in front of the village. I took good aerial
shots of the remains of the boardwalk that used to be behind the
beach in the swamp, and the freshwater spring that now sits seaward
of the beach.
We landed in the soccer field, surrounded by beautiful little
wooden homes, including Mr. Surkino, the mayor. After a few minutes
of greeting on the mayor's porch, Bambang walked up to the station.
I went up with my retinue a little later. The receiver refused
to download properly, so we waited for Caltech's John Galetzka,
our equipment/logistics guy, to arrive by our small aluminum boat.
From the station, we could see that his group was struggling to
find the mouth of the river on the delta, a few hundred meters
offshore. John couldn't get the receiver to download properly either,
so I decided that we would swap it out with a new one. I did not
want to leave the troubled receiver there at the site, even though
it was recording properly, because that would mean that we had
no new data covering the earthquake and post-seismic period. So
we went out in our friend Kisman's longboat to the big boat to
get a new receiver. This meant, of course, that we would have one
less receiver to install on the islands or mainland near the December
26 rupture.
My colleague Danny Natawidjaja stayed on overnight with John at
Muarasaibi, but the rest of us boarded our big boat and continued
our slow trek to the north. We stayed the night in the harbor of
Lebuan Bajau, on the northeastern tip of Siberut Island. We were
pleased to hear from John later in the night that he had, after
all, been successful in downloading the Saibi station receiver,
so there would be no need to use the new receiver there.
We are now on our way across the wide strait between Siberut Island
and the Batu Islands to the north. I'm hoping that we can reach
Tello, the main town of the Batu Islands, by early afternoon. Then
we can download the station there, while Danny and John are downloading
the Air Bangis station, on the coast near the Equator, and at Bais,
just east of Tello. We plan to rendezvous in Tello, just south
of the Equator, tonight.
Our logistics issues (fuel for boat and helicopter and permissions
to go into the stricken area) are getting resolved, one by one.
Thanks to AceS, the satellite telecom company we are working with,
and its CEO, Adi Adiwoso, for satellite phones! And thanks to my
friends Christina and Chris Fowler at the Batang Arau Hotel in
Padang, and to the Indonesian Institute of Science staff in Jakarta,
and Bandung for going to bat for us on all of this. Bambang just
learned that we now have a letter from the military that gives
us permission to use some of their helicopter fuel.
Bambang is resting below deck now; he suffers from chronic seasickness.
I'm feeling a bit nauseated, myself, so I think I'll lie down for
a bit, also.
12:56 p.m. A half hour ago, the boat came to a stop. The captain
told us that the engine had been leaking oil for the past day and
that now there was too little to safely continue on to Tello. So,
we are dead in the water here, just inside the south entrance to
the long narrow strait between Tanabala and Tanamasa Islands. We
can't reach John and Danny via satellite phone to ask them to fly
oil to us, so we have sent Bambang and two of the boatmen in our
dinghy the 45 kilometers to Tello, where they will buy enough oil
to get the boat to Tello. It will be a four-hour round trip, so
the boatmen will probably not be back until about 6 p.m. Bambang
will stay in Tello to begin to work out other logistical details
of the trip.
9:47 p.m. The dinghy has just arrived back from Tello with two,
five-gallon containers of oil. Hallelujah, we might make it to
Tello yet tonight, if the captain is willing to navigate the straits
by the light of the stars. Otherwise, it's four hours beginning
at first light. John and Danny got the two stations at Air Bangis
and Bais downloaded today, so we have only Tello and Simuk Island,
the farthest out and most exposed to the tsunamis, to download
here on the islands. Sikuai and Jambi we can do later in the month,
after we've finished our business in the earthquake region.
8:30 a.m., Friday, en route to Tello on the big boat
We waited until dawn to resume our trek through the strait and
on to Tello; there are too many shallow spots and narrow slots
to travel through on a moonless night. I slept in John's hammock
on the top of the boat, since he was in Tello last night with Danny
and Bambang. They reported by phone at 11 last night that Tello
is astir with fears and rumors of another earthquake and tsunami.
They spent the late afternoon and evening talking, talking, and
talking to individuals and groups about their concerns. Danny confirms
that the tsunami there surged into the main street, but that little
damage was done. He took notes on the tsunamis at Bais and Air
Bangis, based upon eyewitness accounts.
Danny says reports in Tello from Simuk Island are that they also
suffered no loss of life from the tsunamis. We breathe a sigh of
relief, now, believing that none of our friends appear to have
lost their life or property--this time.
I called Heather Guyett Steele, my liaison at Caltech last night
at midnight (9 a.m. in Pasadena) and asked her to wire-transfer
more money from our accounts there to the helicopter company. We'll
need this to reconnoiter Simeuleu and Nias Islands. I doubt that
we'll have time to get to the mainland coast before I leave; too
many logistical snafus this first week on the islands.
8:00 a.m., Saturday, January 15, Tello, just south of the Equator
Yesterday we made two trips out to remote Simuk Island, the farthest
out and most exposed to the tsunamis, yesterday; first Caltech's
John Galetzka and Imam left to begin downloading data, then Bambang
Suwargadi and I went to measure tsunami heights and talk to the
villagers there. The big boat stayed behind in Tello, the main
town of the Batu Islands off the west coast of Sumatra, to have
its engine repaired--a task that the captain judged would take
about three hours.
Simuk is a vast flat island, roughly elliptical in shape, but
with three blunt peninsulas jutting meekly west into the Indian
Ocean. Huge tsunamis reportedly overwashed much of the island after
the giant earthquake of 1861, caused by rupture of the megathrust
under Nias Island, just to the north. Flying over the island, one
sees vast tracts of coconut plantation, with a few small wisps
of smoke rising from burning debris. The highest part of the island
is a soccer-field-sized flat hill top about 20 meters (65 feet)
above sea level. That is the location we chose a couple years ago
for our GPS station.
When John and Imam flew over the Simuk GPS site, they found that
the large cleared area around the instrument was covered with temporary
shelters. Many families had fled there after the tsunamis of December
26 and were still encamped there. One was just a meter (three feet)
or so from the antenna. Last August, we had actually advised them
to go to high ground in the event of a large earthquake, but we
had no thought that they would encamp there for weeks!
The couple of hundred "refugees" greeted us upon our
arrival on the flat hilltop. We held an impromptu meeting, because
they were all very concerned about a rumor that had spread among
them, namely, that there was to be another large tsunami. To keep
order, one leader among them asked for questions, which I answered
and Bambang translated.
Then, while John and Imam downloaded data, Bambang and I, and
a dozen or so children took the path down the cliff and through
the couple of kilometers (mile-plus) of coconut plantations to
the village by the sea. We spent about an hour in an impromptu
meeting with a few dozen more villagers, organized by Pak Emir
(a friend of ours and prominent citizen of Tello, who is in charge
of the health services in the area). Everyone wanted copies of
our brochure so they could better understand the earthquakes and
tsunamis. Many intelligent questions came from people who knew
they were at risk from any tsunami that might be larger than the
one that washed through about half of their village just three
weeks ago. Pak Emir summarized the timing of the tsunami: four
ebbs and flows between roughly 9 a.m. (1.5 hours after they felt
the earthquake) and 5 p.m., with the ebbs preceding the flows.
Dozens of us then walked down the village street to the beach
and found a guy who lived near the beach and was there on the day
of the tsunami. Although the waves washed about 100 meters (110
yards) into the village, the evidence for the flood is scant and
unimpressive. Based upon this guy's observations, we measured the
tsunami height, from sea level just before the tsunami, to the
crest of the highest wave: 3.2 meters, or ten feet! The depth of
the deepest trough was about two meters.
We arrived back in Tello in the late afternoon only to find that
our boat's engine cannot be repaired here in Tello! To make matters
worse, all of the new GPS receivers that we were planning to install
to the north have now been used to replace defective receivers
within our existing network.
So last night we were "dead in the water" again, but
with a finality that was pretty depressing, albeit in a beautiful
little town and a safe harbor. The Mutiara will have to be towed
back to Padang for the repair; the needed parts are not available
here. Within the hour, we hatched a new plan: We will split into
a GPS crew that will head back to Padang on Monday, the 17th, and
a reconnaissance team that will continue north with the helicopter
to survey Nias and Simeuleu Islands. We rented a cargo boat here
in Tello to carry our helicopter fuel, food, and relief supplies,
first to Nias and then to Simeuleu. My two colleagues, Imam and
Danny, and I will go north with the new boat (the Rinjani) and
helicopter. John, Bambang, and Felix will store all the GPS gear
here in Tello and then return to Padang to await the shipment of
four new receivers from the U.S. In the meantime they will send
the GPS data we have collected back to the U.S. for processing.
Danny and I will have the 15th through the 18th to reconnoiter
the islands to the north for evidence of uplift or submergence
(and to document tsunami heights, as time permits).
Danny and I now await the passage of a large black rain squall
that has moved in from the north, before we can take off! Patience
is a virtue, I am told.
10:30 a.m., Sunday, January 16, Sinabang,
capital of Simeulue Island
Midday yesterday we flew across the Equator to Telukdalam, on
the southern coast of Nias Island (itself off the west coast
of Sumatra), and near Lagundri bay, a world-famous spot for surfing.
My friends Chris and Christina Fowler had sent their boat from
Padang, Sumatra, to drop off five barrels of helicopter fuel
for us, but we could not find it at the wharf. Anticipating disaster,
we called Chris in Padang, who assured us that it had arrived
the previous night. He gave me directions to his agent's, Ama
Pipir, house, where it would have been stored. By chance I happened
to meet Johny, one of Pipir's nephews, just as I was wondering
how to get there. He took me on his motorcycle to the house,
where it became clear that I had nothing to worry about. Pipir's
wife brought me five very delicious mangoes--I ate one, and had
a taste of what it must be like in heaven. Saved the rest for
the next few days.
Johny and Ama Pipir's family told me they had felt the earthquake
Sunday at about 8:30 a.m. and said it lasted about five minutes.
The first regression of the water began at 10 a.m. The water did
not come back up until 11:30 a.m. Then there were many oscillations,
which didn't stop until nighttime. The biggest surge was at 2 o'clock
in the afternoon.
We made it to our final rendezvous with the Australian 60-Minutes
film crew at Sirombu, halfway up the west coast of Nias. The tsunami
damage there was horrific. I felt a bit silly landing in a helicopter,
saying a few hellos to the villagers who greeted us, and then immediately
starting to work with the film crew. Seemed a bit crass, actually,
in the face of all the suffering going on there. I was thankful
that we only spent a half hour interviewing and filming, before
interviewing villagers and making observations of the tsunami height--about
4.5 meters (almost 15 feet). Only eight villagers died here though,
because the big wave hit hours after the first ones arrived, giving
all the residents hours of advance notice.
Yamo, a resident of Sirombu, was in Gunungsitoli, the capital
city of Nias on the central eastern coast of the island, but told
me that his family member Fauzi rode out the tsunami surge in the
second floor of his home and is a reliable eyewitness. The big
wave came at 4 p.m., and it came from the south, not the north.
This must mean that the tsunami reflected off of eastern India
and Sri Lanka and came back to the Indonesian islands.
We left Sirombu flying north, reconnoitering the coast all the
way to the northern edge of the island. One particularly impressive
sight was an entire grove of dead coconut palms sitting out on
the reef, seaward of the beach. These obviously had died some time
ago, not as a result of the tsunami. They show that the west coast
of Nias, like the islands we have been studying farther south,
have been sinking during the past several decades. The islands
are like a springboard, storing strain for the day when the megathrust
below gives way and they spring suddenly back up, producing a great
earthquake and tsunami.
We spent the night in Gunungsitoli. Our modest rooms cost us just
$5 each! In the evening, I heard amazing stories from the three
guys from Telukdalam, a village at the southern end of Nias Island,
who had driven our fuel by truck to Gunungsitoli. Alimin is a 52-year-old
man who lives on the waterfront in Telukdalam, in a silver-roofed
house. He was there when the water came into it, and said the water
rose 1.3 meters (four feet, up to his chest) above the floor in
his house. The floor of his house is 2.5 meters (eight feet) above
low tide. This suggests that the amplitude of the highest surge
was about 3.8 meters, or about 12 feet. During the recessions of
the sea, the floor of the bay was completely high and dry out to
50 meters (55 yards) from the shore. He and Ama Pipir's son, Handy,
estimate the drop was six to seven meters (20 to 22 feet) below
sea level! At the time of the tsunami, the sea was near low tide.
Handy and his friend Herman were on Ama Pipir's squid boat when
the tsunami happened. The boat sank down with the water and came
to rest on rocks. They scrambled out and made it to shore before
the next surge.
Our new fuel-supply boat arrived at about 4 a.m., and we loaded
on the extra fuel barrel that had been delivered by truck from
Telukdalam the night before. They took off again for Sinabang (
Simeulue Island's capital) around 11 a.m. It will be a 20-hour
trip for them at about seven miles per hour from Gunungsitoli to
Sinabang. The same trip took us just 1.5 hours by helicopter late
this morning.
We were warmly welcomed by Durmili, the local Bupati (government
official) of Simeulue. His assistant, Riswan, was waiting for us
at the airport when we landed. We were spirited away to the Bupati's
home in the city of Sinabang, where we met a crowd of foreigners
who were there for other reasons--medical, media, etc.
We went on a car caravan with the whole crowd, led by the Bupati,
to view tsunami damage on the southern part of the southwestern
coast. We measured heights of the tsunami of about 2.5 meters (eight
feet). All the stories we heard still say that the first indication
was a recession of the sea. Also of interest to Danny Natawidjaja,
my colleague from the Indonesian Institute of Science (LIPI), and
myself was the evidence for small amounts of permanent submergence
in these towns. Areas that used to be dry now have up to 30 centimeters
(nearly a foot) of standing water in them. Local residents insist
that the beaches have eroded ten meters (33 feet) or so since the
tsunami.
We heard from the Bupati that word has come from the northern
coast that the coral reef there is about a meter (three feet) out
of the water. This is almost precisely what Danny and I had been
guessing would be the case. We will fly there tomorrow morning
to see if the reports are true and, if so, to take some measurements.
If the northern part of the island has risen, it means that the
southern end of the great megathrust rupture that caused the earthquake
is under the island.
At the end of our trip, back at the Bupati's home, we learned
from one of the staff that one of the members of our car caravan,
Pak Riswan, had lost all four of his children in the tsunami in
Banda Aceh, the provincial capital. He was such a stoic all afternoon
long. One would never have suspected that the tragedy was also
a very personal one for him.
A few minutes ago dozens of people began running up the street
past my second-story room, away from the wharf, yelling out to
one another. Turns out a rumor of another tsunami had caused them
to flee. It didn't even occur to me that was the cause of people
running, since I hadn't felt an earthquake. People are clearly
on edge here and on Nias Island. So many people ask us if another
earthquake and tsunami are coming.
8:46 a.m., Thursday, January 20, en route
from Padang, Sumatra, to Jakarta, Indonesia, then on to Singapore
Monday and Tuesday on Simeulue Island were extraordinary, both
scientifically and emotionally. On Monday we flew along the southwestern
coast, past a score or more of fallen bridges and as many coastal
villages, devastated by the tsunami. Near where the island doubles
its width we began to see evidence of what looked like an extremely
low tide--barren, pale-tan ribbons of coral reef paralleling
the coast and extending 100 meters (100-plus yards) and more
from the beaches to the waterline.
During our first circling of one of these reef ribbons, we saw
striking evidence of emergence--pristine pancake-shaped heads of
Porites coral, well above current water level. We landed on the
200-meter wide (700 foot) former shallow reef platform, about halfway
between the former sandy beach and the new shoreline. Before we
could shut down the engine, 100 or more children and adults swarmed
out onto the reef from the trees. We immediately split ourselves
into a science team and a relief team; Danny and I began to inspect
the corals, while Dayat and Samsir (our pilot and mechanic) began
to talk to the villagers and distribute the materials we had brought
along as relief aid--clothing, powdered milk, hammers, and fishing
equipment.
Even though Danny and I have for the past several years been studying
ancient evidence of the slow sinking and fast emergence of the
Sumatran coral reefs, we were astonished to find ourselves walking
through a pristine marine ecosystem, missing only its multitude
of colors, its fish, and its water. Corals of every shape and size
rested lifeless on the reef platform--branching corals, massive
corals, staghorn corals, fire corals, brain corals, whorls, fans.
And here and there a poor crab. Even though the tsunami had raged
across the reef, there was scant evidence of any breakage of the
delicate whorls and dendritic corals that crunched beneath our
feet. But a fishing boat in the trees beyond the shoreline and
an overturned, two-ton umbrella-shaped Porites coral heads were
testimony to the power of the tsunami. The scene was the marine
equivalent of a village on the flank of a volcano after the passage
of a nuee ardente (a destructive "glowing cloud")--life
quick-frozen in place at the moment of death.
Like us, the villagers quickly segregated into two groups. Most
of the adults surrounded Dayat and Samsir, but many of the barefoot
children came racing on to Danny and me. Smiling, cheering, boisterous
young boys and girls, eager to play with us and to watch what we
were doing. We had noticed as we circled the reef that their village,
Ujung Salang, had been completely washed over by the tsunami. Hardly
a building remained. Yet, there was no trace of sadness in their
beautiful faces. I have no idea where they are living now--on higher
ground in the forest, I imagine. They were eager to be in the pictures
I was taking. In fact, I had to coax them to the sides of the images,
so that I could see the corals. I have one picture with several
kids standing on top of a pancake-shaped coral head. They are standing
at what used to be lowest low tide of the year. At the time of
our visit, the water level was a meter (three feet) lower.
We estimate the emergence here to be nearly a meter and a half.
To produce so much uplift, the block above the gently northeast-dipping
megathrust, 25 kilometers (15 miles) or so beneath the reefs, must
have slipped about ten meters (11 yards) toward the southwest.
We hopscotched our way farther north for the rest of the afternoon,
stopping only occasionally to make an additional measurement and
to divert around rainstorms. A systematic, detailed survey will
have to wait until we can return, hopefully in a few months. Along
the northern coast, newly emerged reef ribbons were everywhere.
The emergence had doubled the diameter of some of the smaller islets.
And along most of these coastlines were old stands of decayed coconut
palms and other trees out on the reef, seaward of the old beach--testaments
to the fact that the land had been sinking slowly in the decades
before the earthquake. In the complexly embayed coastline of the
northern coast, muddy flats surrounded by mangrove forest have
also emerged above the water. Some of these have muddy brown rectangular
fields on them. I think these are very old rice paddies that slowly
submerged into the intertidal zone or below in the decades prior
to the earthquake. Now they are back above high tide, ready for
cultivation again! Some villagers have, in fact, asked us if the
water will return soon and submerge the newly dried reef and mud
flats. We tell them with confidence that submergence of these new
lands will not occur soon. It will take more than 100 years for
the water to return to its levels on the day before the earthquake.
On Tuesday it was more of the same. We filled some of the gaps
between our measurement sites and reconnoitered the northeastern
coast. The former lowest low tide level is now at least 25 centimeters
(10 inches) above water. So the island tilted coseismically both
from northwest to southeast and from southwest to northeast. The
pattern and magnitude of uplift is strikingly similar to what we
know happened to the south in the Mentawai Islands during the magnitude
8.7 earthquake of 1833. The half-hour flight back south to Sinabang
took us over vast tracts of virgin forest, full of tall, white-trunked
dipterocarp trees towering over the lush understory. Inspiring
flight, tempered only by the fact that Danny and I were a bit uncomfortable
in our pants, soaked from our wading in shallow water.
Late Tuesday evening, back in Sinabang, we briefed the Bupati,
Darmili, on our findings. We presented him with two gifts from
his own island--a small, bulbous, bleached-white head of pristine
Goniastrea retiformis (a honeycomb-like coral) from one of the
dead reefs and a CD with many of our photographs. He is a gracious
and thoughtful man, who seems intent on understanding what has
happened, so that he can make good decisions about what to do to
help his island recover. We mentioned our interest in establishing
a couple of continuous GPS stations on the island, to monitor the "healing" of
the earthquake wound. He said he would welcome our return.
Yesterday, Wednesday, we all left Simeulue Island. Danny and Imam
flew to Medan, the capital of North Sumatra, on a small commercial
airplane, while I flew with the helicopter crew back to Padang,
Sumatra. Passing low over the virgin forests and rice paddies of
southern Simeulue, it occurred to me that this might well be the
most beautiful of all the islands in the chain. We landed twice
along the five-hour journey to refuel, at the towns of Gunungsitoli
and Airbangis, where we had made sure to stash barrels of fuel
for the return flight. At Airbangis, a town almost right on the
Equator, an official came to see me while I was waiting in an airy
little hotel lobby for the refueling to be completed. He asked
for advice about what to do to protect the city. His concerns are
warranted: Passing along the coast of mainland Sumatra, between
the equator and Padang, we saw ample evidence of the possibility
of a repetition of the disaster of December 26. As along the west
coast of Aceh, North and West Sumatrans have built many of their
villages, towns, and cities right on the coast, directly east of
the source of giant earthquakes. In some cases, towns and villages
sit on barrier beaches, between the sea and long estuaries. Without
the construction of bridges across the estuaries in the coming
years, there will be no safe place for the townspeople to flee
in the 15 minutes or so between the earthquake and the tsunami
surges.
Kerry Sieh |
Friday, January 28
Hello all,
Bambang and I swapped receivers at Bais and Simuk Islands and
met up with Imam and the hired cargo boat Mentawai Indah in
Tello yesterday (Thursday,) evening. We all throttled out of
Tello early this morning and have been doing a nice seven knots
on our way up to the village of Sinibang on Simeuleu Island.
We've been showered on much of the day and currently (Friday
night) find ourselves cruising past Gunung Sitoli, Nias Island.
We should be in Sinabang late tomorrow morning.
Saturday, January 29
Saturday, 6 p.m. and we have Simeuleu Island in sight. We were
delayed by 12 hours because of nasty seas and weather all last
night up until 2 p.m. this afternoon. Poor Bambang is very seasick.
We should be getting to Sinabang, Simeuleu, around 10 p.m. this
evening. All are looking forward to a nice quiet anchorage tonight
and starting GPS station installation tomorrow.
Simeulue Island, Monday January 31
We're ending our second full day here in the area of Sinabang,
on Simeulue Island. We started building a GPS station at the island's
only airport today after getting the thumbs up from the island's
chief administrator yesterday. The station should be up and running
by tomorrow at noon, February 1. That includes satellite telemetry
with the latest version of satellite terminal firmware from the
ACeS team in Batam, Indonesia.
Bambang and I also gave a talk tonight at a gathering of island
officials and foreign guests. We had no clue it was going to be
such a formal event! Lobster and other delicacies for dinner, desert,
and famous Aceh coffee. Thankfully our graphics and our message
made up for me failing to wear long pants!
We plan to place a station near Sinabang first, followed by a
station on the northern coast of Simeulue, then one somewhere near
Banda Aceh. The Nias station will be last because we're expecting
two receivers sent by Heather and others at Caltech, to be delivered
to the Bupati's office in Gunung Sitoli.
Great news! The police in Tuapejit located all the equipment stolen
from the Panjang Island station. The police are expecting that
reward Kerry promised!
Other great news: there are about 30 less cockroaches on our ship
due to my fancy footwork of the last 24 hours!
Wednesday, February 2, on Simeulue Island
Hello all,
Our fine ship and crew are all now on the extreme northern tip
of Simeulue Island, anchored in a cove near a village called
Lewah. This morning we left Sinabang, the island's capital on
the east coast, on a late start (electric generator issues, I
think) and cruised the east side of the island on our way north.
I slept in late this morning to catch up on rest, but during
this time my colleagues Bambang and Imam met up with the Bakosurtanal
(equivalent to the USGS) that will be re-occupying Yehuda and
Jeff's site (both from the Scripps Institute) here in northern
Sumatra. I think our timing to install the new GPS station at
Simeulue Airport in order to support this latest survey couldn't
be better!
As we approached the northern coast of Simeulue, we started looking
for potential GPS sites. Around 4 p.m. I spotted some hills that
would nicely accommodate a GPS station. What made things better
was that it was near Lewah, with its sheltered cove for the ship,
and we still had a couple of hours to hit the shore, chat with
the locals, and scout out a specific place for the GPS station.
Lewah took a direct hit from the earthquake and subsequent tsunami.
Amazingly, no one, not one single person, was killed. The locals
said the shaking was strong--no one could stay standing!--and lasted
about two minutes with a separation of about 10 seconds between
the primary and secondary earthquake waves. Once the shaking stopped,
everyone ran for the highest points possible on the hills behind
the village. The first wave of the tsunami train was a positive
wave (where the initial tsunami wave is a crest, causing a rise
in water level). Villagers across the bay said they saw a huge
wave gathering offshore of Lewah, but then it broke unexpectedly
several hundred meters (a few hundred yards) before hitting the
village. The center of the village was hit with a surge of water
about one meter (three feet) deep, but it is amazing how much of
the village is intact.
The villagers indicate that sea level has dropped between one
and two meters, and pointed to the exposed reef in front of the
former beach as evidence. Bambang and I take all this to mean that
this part of the island experienced uplift. The uplifted reef probably
reduced the force of the tsunami blow considerably. There are coral
micro-atolls all over the place. Some still have living tissue
at their bases, while other, older ones have been exposed in their
sandy graves by the December tsunamis.
We'll take time over the next few days to not only build a continuous
GPS station here, but also document post-seismic uplift and tsunami
parameters. We'll listen and record the stories of the villagers,
hand out some relief supplies, and give a presentation tomorrow
night on the science behind the earthquake and tsunamis they witnessed.
Friday, February 4, Northernmost Point of
Simeulue Island
Hello to all,
There is another operational continuous GPS station on Simeulue
Island as of this afternoon, Friday, February 4, 2005. The station
is named after the nearby village, Lewak (the station code is
LEWK), which is located on the northernmost promontory of the
island. We planted the station on one hot, sunny, and steamy
day, and boy, are we smoked! I was expecting afternoon thundershowers
today just like the previous days, but I was fooled. I did feel
a small earthquake this afternoon instead, its shear waves lasting
about five seconds.
We will spend the whole day tomorrow interviewing the villagers
about their earthquake and tsunami experiencesÑsorry, just
had an interruption. The boat crew just caught a sea turtle by
accident (a hook in its left front flipper). I yelled at them in
all the excitement to let it go, but finally had to go down and
grab the thing out of their hands and throw it back into the night.
Half the guys wanted to make a stew out of it.
Now, as I was saying, we will spend tomorrow doing interviews,
making more measurements of uplift based on coral and mangroves,
and taking lots of photos. I can tell you a few key things we have
learned so far:
--Uplift in this area (N 02.924*, E 095.804*) is around 35 centimeters
(almost 14 inches).
--The first tsunami wave (a positive, where water rises) hit about
30 minutes after the earthquake; a second tsunami hit about 20
minutes later and was larger than the first. Smaller tsunamis kept
coming even into the evening.
Last night's outreach program was attended by many people, including
those from nearby villages. We set up an outdoor theater using
a projector screen, digital LCD projector, laptop computer, amplified
sound system, and a portable electric generator. First, Bambang
and I congratulated them for doing an excellent job of surviving
the earthquake and tsunamis. Then we showed them a picture of a
nine-meter (29 feet) offset across a stream along the Denali Fault
in Alaska, a cross-sectional drawing of a typical subduction zone,
tectonic maps of Southeast Asia, Caltech's Chen Ji's finite fault
model, satellite images of devastated areas on Sumatra, and videos
of tsunamis hitting Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Banda Aceh. We gave
them a quick course on plate tectonics and the nature of tsunamis.
The program was a hit and lasted until 10:30 p.m., which is pretty
late for a remote little village.
Well, that's it for tonight. I hope to provide a longer report
tomorrow.
Sincerely,
John Galetzka and the Team
Wednesday, February 9
Hello folks,
Sorry for the communications blackout. We've been busy. Real busy.
Currently anchored in a river near a village called Lamno in western
Aceh on Sumatra Island. The third station has been installed as
of late this afternoon. The name is Ujung Muloh (Muloh Point),
UMLH, approximate coordinates N 05*03', E 095*,20'. The rock was
hard and the day was hot. We woke at 0530 hours to work on the
station, and just ended (2330 hours) an evening program at the
village about earthquakes and tsunamis.
The impact of the tsunamis between here and our last stop, Banda
Aceh, is just unbelievable! Every meter of coastline has been swept.
Low-lying areas that I've seen are two to three kilometers (one
to two miles) inland. Headlands and cliff shorelines are washed
clean an average of about 15 meters (16 yards), and in some places
we have seen evidence of waves reaching 30 meters.
Recovery is in progress and relief helicopters are everywhere.
Survivors of the tsunamis are trying to start their lives again
and hold what's left of their community together. I've only seen
one person crying since I've been in Aceh. We spoke to one young
man today that used to live in a house not too far from where we
built our GPS station. He was away at college when the waves came.
They took away his entire family, all the homes and buildings in
the village, along with at least 90 percent of its inhabitants.
The crew is splitting up tomorrow: Bambang, my colleague, a television
crew, and I are flying by helicopter back to Banda Aceh where Bambang
and I will catch a commercial flight to Medan (Sumatra), then Gunung
Sitoli on Nias Island; the rest of the team will take our cargo
boat, the Mentawai Indah to Gunung Sitoli on Nias Island, via Sinabang
on Simeulue Island.
I'm off to my hammock for four hours of sleep.
Friday, February 11
Bambang and I are currently delayed in Medan, Sumatra, for a day,
taking a forced rest break before meeting up with the boat on Simeulue
Island. We will head for Nias Island after troubleshooting some
equipment.
I walked around Ujung Muloh (Muloh Point), in western Aceh on
Sumatra Island the morning after completing the GPS station. It's
not difficult to measure the tsunami runup. It is, however, difficult
as hell to measure tectonic subsidence or uplift. I have never
encountered anything like the landscape the team and I have been
running around in these last few days here on the mainland Aceh
province. The erosion caused by the tsunamis is immense. The senses
are near saturation as you wander around shallow graves, drifts
of debris, and polished house foundations looking for evidence
of pre-earthquake sea level.
I focused on taking as many photos as possible during my two-hour
survey of the east side of Muloh Point. My hope was to capture
subtle clues that I could see after careful review and thought.
I can say with almost certainty that this area experienced co-seismic
subsidence. How much? Whew, that's tough to say, but my estimate
is about 25 to 50 centimeters (ten to 20 inches). Perhaps there
was more, but that requires more work walking the site with knowledgeable
survivors, and reviewing photographic surveys of the Ujung Muloh
bridge that the provincial road department might have.
Another observation: the chance for survival on the islands of
the forearc ridge (a forearc is the region between a subduction
zone and a volcanic chain) is higher because high ground tends
to be close to villages; here on the mainland, populations are
larger and tend to congregate in broad coastal plains where there
is little chance to outrun a tsunami, even with a few minutes of
warning.
I am convinced that our base city, Padang, West Sumatra, as it
exists now, will one day meet the same fate as the western coast
of Aceh. For the last few years I thought that tsunamis generated
by a giant earthquake under the Mentawai Island might cause havoc
100, 200 or even 300 meters (100 to 300 yards) into Padang. From
what I've seen in Banda Aceh and Ujung Muloh, a two- kilometer
(mile-plus) tsunami runup into West Sumatra coastal plains is assured.
Let's hope there is time to change the way people live in cities
and villages in coastal areas of western Sumatra.
Damn.
Off to bed.
John Galetzka
February 12-18
Dear colleagues and friends,
This is the final report from the field here in Sumatra. The LIPI
team, crew of the Mentawai Indah, and I are back safe in Padang,
West Sumatra province after spending 23 days at sea, on various
islands, and the west coast of mainland Aceh province. We overcame
fears of additional tsunamis, outbreaks of disease, encountering
Free Aceh Movement (GAM) rebels, and traveling into new and uncertain
waters. To make the best use of our time and money we didn't limit
our sea travel time to daylight hours. We covered long distances
at night, encountering many violent thunderstorms along the way--thank
goodness for GPS.
We succeeded at our primary goal of installing four continuously
operating GPS reference stations around the southern portion of
the giant December 26, 2004 rupture on the Sumatran subduction
zone. The team managed to do a few other useful tasks as well:
--Resolving bad GPS hardware problems at two older GPS stations
en route to the epicentral area.
--Supporting efforts by our partners at Asia Cellular Satellite
(ACeS) in testing satellite telemetry at three GPS stations.
--Conducting quite a bit of educational outreach in the form of
evening multimedia programs explaining the science behind the earthquake
and tsunamis to government officials and the public in various
villages and towns.
--Doing an equally large amount of educational outreach on earthquake
and tsunami preparedness at our stopovers to islands outside the
devastated area.
--Making a handful of observations of tectonic vertical displacement,
and tsunami size, timing, polarity, and runup of water.
--Interviewing a few selected individuals about their experience
of the earthquake and tsunamis to be used for future educational
outreach materials.
--Handing over a small amount of relief supplies to two villages
(Lewak and Lamno) directly affected by the tsunamis that are hosting
new GPS stations (I really wish we had more to give).
Please allow me to backtrack one week to tell you some of our
adventures. I believe I last reported to you on February 12 from
Medan, North Sumatra province. At that time my colleague Bambang
and I had split from the boat to try to fly ahead of them to do
some advance work on Nias Island. Medan was also an opportunity
to catch a little rest, take in some excellent food, and send out
some emails and GPS data files over a rare broadband Internet connection.
February 12
Early morning Bambang and I failed to get a flight to Nias Island,
but we lucked out when Imam called from Sinabang, Simeulue Island,
to say that the boat had made a slight detour to fill up on fresh
water for showering and cooking. We caught a rickety old cargo-turned-passenger
plane to Simeulue, fixed (temporarily) the GPS station at the airport,
then linked up with the boat in Sinabang harbor. We were off to
Nias Island a little before noon.
Note: No one in Sinabang, including the harbor master or myself,
has observed any recent change in sea level at the harbor, approximate
coordinates N 2.486*, E 96.386*.
February 13
Arrived and anchored a kilometer off shore from Gunung Sitoli,
Nias Island, very early in the morning during another nasty thunderstorm.
Once the sun and a reasonable hour of Sunday morning came around,
Bambang and I went to meet with the vice chief administrator of
Nias to get permission to install a GPS station on the northwest
tip of Nias. We received a positive response and even the use of
a driver and 4x4 vehicle to scout for a site.
Several hours later with the help of some very friendly locals,
a site was found on a coconut palm-covered limestone plateau near
the town of Lahewa. Bambang and I zipped back to Gunung Sitoli
for a quick bite to eat, to tell the boat crew that we would be
leaving Gunung Sitoli at 1 a.m. to cruise around to Lahewa, and
to give our earthquake/tsunami briefing to the Augus, the vice
chief and a media specialist he hired from Medan to make an educational
video for the public about the tsunami hazard on Nias.
February 14
12 a.m. wakeup call, then 1 a.m. departure from Gunung Sitoli,
navigating by GPS counter-clockwise around the island to get to
Lahewa. As usual, we encounter another wicked thunderstorm along
the way, but somehow manage to make our appointment with a cargo
truck at the Lahewa harbor at 7 a.m.
By 9 a.m. the Hilti drill was driving the 2.25 millimeter drill
bit into the weathered limestone, while coconut palms were falling
left and right at the hands of a man with a big chain saw making
suitable skyview for the GPS station. The day was already punishingly
hot and humid, and the sky was filling with a thick smoke haze
from forest and agricultural fires in eastern Sumatra.
6 p.m. and the station was turned on and tracking satellites,
the local helpers paid, and the tools loaded on the hired truck.
Dinner (typically fish curry and rice) was served back at the boat,
followed by a quick email message via satellite, to Caltech's Kerry
Sieh and Jean-Philippe Avouac, then to sleep around 10 or 11 p.m.
February 15
After a quick early morning check of the new GPS station and an
interview with Jim, the harbormaster, we trotted off to Tello Island.
The haze limited visibility to about three kilometers and blocked
our view of the west coast of Nias Island. Kerry and Danny were
lucky not to have encountered this atmospheric situation during
their helicopter survey of Nias and Simeulue back in January. It
is an especially dry year here in Sumatra, but with all the thunderstorms
we bump into, one might be surprised to hear such news.
Note: Mr. Jim, the harbormaster here in Lahewa, Nias (N 1.397*,
E 97,172*), was witness to the tsunamis of December 26, 2004 that
entered this two-kilometer long, mangrove-lined bay. He indicates
that a 50- centimeter (foot-and-a-half) tsunami with positive polarity
arrived around 8:52 a.m. local time (about one hour after the earthquake).
A second surge of similar height arrived around 11:06 a.m. The
third tsunami was the largest and caused minor havoc in the harbor.
That surge arrived around 1:35 p.m. and was about 1.7 meters (about
six feet) above average sea level. There were smaller tsunamis
throughout the evening. There were no deaths attributed to the
tsunamis in Lahewa, but several fishing vessels were destroyed.
February 16
3 a.m. and I wake to the sound of yelling. "KIRI, KIRI, KIRI!" (LEFT,
LEFT, LEFT!), followed by a big crunching sound. I fly out of my
hammock and started stuffing a drybag with laptop computers, satellite
phones, and other small valuable items. After traveling hundreds
of kilometers in unfamiliar seas over the past couple of weeks,
the captain hit a reef less than one kilometer (half-mile) from
the dock at Tello Island, a place he is supposed to be very familiar
with. The ship was tilted up slightly and 15 degrees to the left.
Gunning the engine in full reverse and dumping the freshwater stored
in the forward tanks did nothing to move the boat off the edge
of the reef--all we could do was hope that the tide was going up.
This is not the first time I've been on a boat that has hit coral,
but this was certainly the hardest impact. I always wonder where
these crazy boat captains come from and how they are selected to
be boat captains. It seems to me that they are almost always the
least sensible person on the boat crew.
I took this time before higher tide and the arrival of the burning
sun to visit the Tello GPS station to upgrade the ACeS satellite
terminal firmware. I was hoping that by the time I arrived at the
boat dock, the Mentawai Indah would be freed from the reef and
waiting for me. It was still dark when I arrived back at the boat
dock with the boat off in the distance still perched on the reef.
At 7 a.m. we fired up the engine again and pulled on a rope to
an anchor set 50 meters (55 yards) left and to the rear of the
boat. We broke free!
Imam snorkeled under the boat trying to look for damage but found
nothing serious. With that good news we started for our next destination
13 hours away--Muara Saibi, Siberut Island.
February 17
Not surprisingly, just after midnight and one hour away from Muara
Saibi, we headed straight into another damn thunderstorm in our
course. Imam had navigated us up to this point using GPS, but now
it was my turn to guide us into the bay in darkness and rain. After
dropping anchor, the dingy dropped me just outside the surf zone
at Muara Saibi--in the dark, we weren't sure how big the surf was
and didn't want to put the dingy at risk taking me to the beach.
Wading through the surf turned out to be easy, as was finding the
trailhead on the beach. Fifteen minutes later I was at the GPS
station swapping out GPS receivers.
By 4 a.m. I was back on the Mentawai Indah. The next destination
was Sikuai Island, a resort near our home port in Padang.
It was 3 p.m. as we neared Sikuai Island and the dramatic headlands
in this part of West Sumatra. The scene reminded me of the coast
of Aceh, minus the zone near sea level stripped bare by the big
tsunamis. The guest center and all the bungalows at the resort
would fit within this zone that was no less than 15 meters (50
feet) high. We have a GPS station perched on a hilltop there at
Sikuai, and the staff knows us very well. They said that there
was a "strong" earthquake a few days prior and that everybody
ran up the hill in fear of tsunamis.
February 18
I checked a USGS earthquake website back in Padang the next day
and didn't find an earthquake greater than magnitude 5 anywhere
near this area. Like elsewhere in Indonesia, people are very nervous
about another big earthquake and tsunami.
The police on Sipora Island caught three individuals and recovered
the hardware stolen from the GPS station at Panjang Island. Bambang
examined the recovered items at a police station in Padang--the
geodetic monument, radome (antenna housing), and GPS antenna seem
to be unharmed back at the site. Only the solar panels and batteries
can be used again--the GPS receiver was dismantled by the individuals
who tried to figure out what the gizmo was used for.
Imam called from the small boat harbor to tell us that the side
of the Mentawai Indah that struck the reef had developed big leaks.
The boat was going to get a zinc sheet band-aid, then head for
a dry dock in Sibolga, North Sumatra for full repair.
Well, that's all. The field team is tired, but happy for this
experience. We hope our efforts are helpful to mankind. Appreciation
goes out to the various support elements in Padang and Bandung,
Indonesia, and in Pasadena and La Jolla, California.
John Galetzka
Field Assistant
Tectonics Observatory
California Institute of Technology |