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The 1st Dujiangyan International Forum"Developing a Community Ownership

DR Culture to create Sustainability within the Education Infrastructure"

"Developing a Community Ownership DR Culture to create Sustainability


within the Education Infrastructure"
 
Perception of your vulnerability is a good starting point if we are to develop community ownership
of a substantive Disaster Reduction Culture.
As I review recent mega disasters such as the great 2004 tsunamis,

the enormous bush fires more recently in Australia and California, the cyclone across Myanmar in
2008

Example of cyclone damage


and of course the very destructive earthquakes in Bam Iran 2003, Pakistan 2005 , Indonesia 2006

Example Pedang Indonesia 2009


here in Sichuan 2008 and this year in Haiti 2010,

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The 1st Dujiangyan International Forum"Developing a Community Ownership
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Haiti 2010
I notice that all of these seemed to catch us by surprise. Australians and Americans have had bush
fires before and yet lives were lost. Tsunamis are not new, in fact the small Island of Simeulue, off
Indonesia during the 2004 Tsunamis had its infrastructure destroyed but yet only seven of the
island's 70,000 people died. Chile recently experienced a 8.8 earthquake but lost less than 600
people, but Haiti lost 230,000 with a magnitude 7.0 earthquake. The Caribbean experiences up to
ten hurricanes annually with few lives lost but Myanmar lost 4000 with one cyclone in 2008 and
10,000 were lost during another cyclone in South Asia in 1999.
So we must ask ourselves why do some communities survive well and others not. Why is it that
some are resilient, prepared and able to recover relatively quickly but others take years, in fact some
fail to ever fully recover.
I turn to our understanding of the ‘perception of risk’

Shimla India
, realising our vulnerability to the numerous potential hazards, which might affect a global region, an
individual mainland country or Island, a region within a country, a single community or simply one
school within a community and to demonstrate this I sight the UK’s Aberfan disaster (appendix 5)
within Wales in 1966

Aberfan Wales UK 1966

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The 1st Dujiangyan International Forum"Developing a Community Ownership
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when a coal slag heap slipped killing 144 people, of which 116 were children within one school and
the more recent school collapse in Haiti in November 2008

Haiti School collapse 2008


when an unauthorised building used as a school collapsed beneath them, killing 88.
To understand the potential risks, we must make ourselves aware of the differing types of hazards
likely to affect us. Often these are passed down between generations within the collective
indigenous knowledge; during more recent decades this knowledge is reinforced by formal disaster
reduction education within schools and communities introduced by specialist advocators, constantly
encouraging the inclusion of DR within Education for all. We have a few key globetrotters with us
today, including Marla Patal and Khizer Omer. Authorities also have a moral responsibility to ensure
public buildings, schools and hospitals are built within Building Codes, to recognised high standards
of safety and resilience with Schools being licensed and monitored, with all alterations, additions
and developments being professionally assessed by qualified engineers.

Engineer inspection
So, the first formal step is assessment; assessing what we know and understand; assessing the risks;
assessing our preparedness, our potential resilience and assessing our management resources to
make change.
However this can not be done purely by a single teacher or indeed purely by our Mayor, it has to be
through the combined, managed and informed efforts of the whole community,

Community meetings

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The 1st Dujiangyan International Forum"Developing a Community Ownership
DR Culture to create Sustainability within the Education Infrastructure"

with the support of the Governance and the initiatives of community leaders such as Mayors,
Teachers and specialist NGOs.
I sight two examples: the Headmaster Mr Ye Zhiping of the Sangzao Middle School, as a first
example. This gentleman educated himself as to the potential risks to his school, he researched what
he believed was wrong with his school buildings and researched what remedies were required; then
encouraged the authorities to provide the capital to carry out the necessary structural retrofitting.
But it doesn’t end there because then he had to ensure that the whole school community acted as
one team, training students and teachers with drills,

Children ‘duck cover hold’ drill


time and again until it became second nature. During the Sichuan Earthquake in 2008 His proactive
actions guaranteed that all of the 2,323 children survived. Did he know a major earthquake was
going to happen so soon?. No, it may never have happened in his lifetime, but does that mean that
you never prepare? Again the answer must be no! (See appendix 3 for the full story and link . )
http://www.bullsandmosquitoes.info/solmaz/website/#/lessons/

The second example of initiative was reported on the COGSS DPE Website last year by Solmaz
Mohadjer and it is about your City here taking a lead. In April 2009, Teachers without Borders, the
Dujiangyan Bureau of Education and the Teacher Training School conducted a 10-day earthquake
emergency education workshop for over 200 teachers and school administrators in Dujiangyan.
And i quote... “The workshop key components included pre- and post-assessment sessions,
earthquake science, earthquake hazards, and mitigation strategies. The workshop participants used
scientific data to learn about what happens at or near tectonic plate boundaries; used simple items
such as silly putty and rubber bands to learn why and how rocks deform at or near plate boundaries;
built and operated a simple model to learn about stick-slip motion along faults; and explored seismic
waves using slinky toys and ropes. Participants learned about liquefaction, earthquake-induced
landslides, structural and non-structural hazards by designing and conducting experiments, data
collection and data analysis. They discussed several mitigation strategies and tested their
effectiveness with their models. Furthermore, the participants developed, practiced, and improved
their earthquake emergency response plan, and discussed how they could incorporate what they
learned into their existing school’s curricula.”
A prime example of raising awareness and developing the perception of risk and introducing
solutions to strengthen their Disaster Risk Reduction Culture. (See appendix 1 for the link.)
I now refer back to the Simeulue Island in the 2004 Tsunami where the 70,000 inhabitants survived.
Why did they? Because years ago similar event occurred, so over the generations the stories were
handed down,’ when you see the fish walk, you must go to the hills’. A well established culture of
survival by a relatively stable indigenous population. (See appendix 4 for the full story.)
However within our modern society we have a more transient population due to economic
migration, sometimes conflict and sometimes due to environmental change altering out agricultural
patterns. Consequently collective indigenous knowledge, so vital to ensure sustainable communities,
creating the necessary resilience become diluted and often forgotten.

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The 1st Dujiangyan International Forum"Developing a Community Ownership
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Is this new news to us? I believe not, however I think that it is necessary that we remind ourselves of
these facts prior to establishing and implementing new policies.
Solutions? you may ask! There are no easy, quick fixes. But I shall now address the development of a
resilient infrastructure with schools. Why do I advocate that we should start within schools. Well,
the children are our future., the future teachers, traders and Mayors. Consequently why waste our
efforts by not protecting our greatest assets, whether it be investment for change or indeed for the
conservation of our way of life and future prosperity of our people. So a priority is that we must
educate within safe environments.
But there are also many additional advantages in creating these safe school environments beyond
just the safety of the children. The schools are used for adult education, for community social
activities, for formal community activities and for the dissemination of information from the
Administrations. Strong resilient schools can also potentially be used as short term refuges during a
natural disaster or local hazard event and as short term shelters post disaster and also as
distribution focal points during early recovery. Plus most importantly if built with resilience to the
effects of the disaster , they will ensure the opportunity for a fast resumption of education, creating
some of the first stages of a return to normality releasing parents from purely childminding ,
enabling them to commence their recovery process of rebuilding their homes and regenerating
incomes.
Solutions? I still hear you demand!
Disaster Reduction Education and protecting those whom we educate is an essential part of the
solution.
But, for the purposes of this forum, this workshop, the key ingredients which we as a group should
develop and elaborate upon when addressing creating sustainable school infrastructure are:
Assessments; informed management development; capacity build of all stakeholders; and the
involving of the children themselves. The sooner that you can generate their thought processes as to
the challenges, the sooner they will develop and assist in the ownership of the solutions, thus
providing this much sought after sustainability.
So one at a time:
Assessments, this process includes addressing potential risk, vulnerability and our community’s
perception of risk. Address that and you start to develop your resilient culture and build your ‘army
of solution’. Assessments should be a managed cycle, never completed, always reviewing our
changing environment and circumstances. Teachers and students can be the first to notice change or
structural risk within their environment and especially within or potentially to their school building
itself. I implore you to involve them at a very early stage by priming them with necessary basic tools
to assist. This will provide the fast early stages of flagging obvious vulnerabilities, and relieves the
pressure from the authorities and their small workforce of specialists. Last year when i visited
Chengdu for the International Disaster Reduction Conference the Chinese National Government
issued an edict that 300,000 major schools throughout China must be assessed for vulnerability.
They went further, by making it the responsibility of the regional Administrations to ensure the
assessments are carried out and for the safety of the schools. This is a big undertaking which could
fail if the those assessments are not correctly formatted for easy analysis by technical experts and
then acted upon promptly.
So next; Management development, Capacity Build and Involving the Students, for my purposes i
combine within one passionate solution, of sharing resources to ensure a far speedier approach to
an end goal. That is , the development of the previously conceptional clustering system, where a
handful of schools within proximity of each other work and develop strategies together, assisting
each other in the implementation of ideas, supporting each other during crisis and sharing resources
during developing the resilience of their buildings through assessment, retrofitting, build back
better, relocation or extensions; sharing capacity build of masons, chippies and technicians within
communities; and sharing resources of early warning systems in order to minimise a potential

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The 1st Dujiangyan International Forum"Developing a Community Ownership
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disaster, whether for earthquake, landslide or flooding, all very different but i believe all now within
our grasp of reality.
I sight the example from within Indonesia. In a valley along a water coarse, the children from within
the various schools took the initiative, supported by the teachers, to assess their risks of flooding.
Having identified their vulnerability, they created their own cluster of potentially affected schools
from the higher valley to the lower valley floor entering the City of Jakarta. They implemented and
practiced drills and procedures which included developing their own monitoring system of potential
crisis, for when the rains came. The children watched for the build ups of waters in the rivers, the
forming torrents and upon reaching researched levels they activated their early warning
communications and drills , informing the schools lower down the valley of the imminent dangers.
Those affected schools were then able to evacuate safely as a precaution, potentially saving many
lives and essential assets from within the schools. It has concentrated the minds of all, to ensure
minimum losses; and importantly the children have built up a bond with their neighbouring schools
and communities within the cluster network, encouraging parents and the wider community to
become involved. Children are an exceptionally enthusiastic resource if given guidance and the
opportunity to take a lead. (See appendix 2 for the full story and link.)

http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2009/08/08/n
gos-prepare-students-face
-floods.html
I finish on one further   
suggestion to help develop community ownership of a sustainable disaster
reduction culture within the education infrastructure, that is if we start by prioritising on making our
schools safe, resilient, structurally and visually, then why not offer them as a focal point example to
the whole community, introducing a real example of what a resilient structure should look like and
how in fact you construct such a building

Retrofitted school Balakot Pakistan


The key safety designs features being highlighted or duplicated alongside, so that the knowledge is
shared with all potential private home builders. The school being readily accessible and having
permanent displays of posters, progress photos and hands on examples,

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Models of design principles
guidelines and data sheets referring to applicable codes with answers to questions of why, ensuring
the development of a compliance culture. All of which can be assisted by the children helping to
disseminate the availability of the information back to their parents and extended families and
friends.
So In summary, I have revisited some old approaches and encouraged development of newer
initiatives. There is no quick fix, however in the short term by working together you can make
substantive inroads into raising awareness, developing the perception of risk and demonstrating that
solutions can be found to build resilience and sustainability within our Communities.
But In the long term it is the Children who will be agents of change!

In the long term


it is the Children who will be the Agents of
change

Thankyou
Garry de la Pomerai
Coalition for Global School Safety – Disaster Prevention
Education
www.cogssdpe.ning.com

Garry de la Pomerai
COGSS DPE
Coalition for Global School Safety-Disaster Prevention Education

Appendix 1:

Posted by Solmaz Mohadjer on the COGSS DPE website


In April 2009, Teachers without Borders, the Dujiangyan Bureau of Education and the Teacher
Training School in Dujiangyan, China, conducted a 10-day earthquake emergency education
workshop for over 200 teachers and school administrators in Dujiangyan, a city heavily damaged by
the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake.

The workshop key components included pre- and post-assessment sessions, earthquake science,
earthquake hazards, and mitigation strategies. The workshop participants used scientific data to
learn about what happens at or near tectonic plate boundaries; used simple items such as silly putty
and rubber bands to learn why and how rocks deform at or near plate boundaries; built and
operated a simple model to learn about stick-slip motion along faults; and explored seismic waves

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The 1st Dujiangyan International Forum"Developing a Community Ownership
DR Culture to create Sustainability within the Education Infrastructure"

using slinky toys and ropes. Participants learned about liquefaction, earthquake-induced landslides,
structural and non-structural hazards by designing and conducting experiments, data collection and
data analysis. They discussed several mitigation strategies and tested their effectiveness with their
models. Furthermore, the participants developed, practiced, and improved their earthquake
emergency response plan, and discussed how they could incorporate what they learned into their
existing school’s curricula.

The workshop lessons can be viewed and downloaded in English and Chinese:
http://www.bullsandmosquitoes.info/solmaz/website/#/lessons/

Appendix 2:
Indonesia Clusterering of Schools for flood mitigation
See:
http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2009/08/08/ngos-prepare-students-face
-floods.html  
 
NGOs prepare students to face floods
 
 
Prodita Sabarini , The Jakarta Post , Jakarta, Bandung | Sat, 08/08/2009

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1:42 PM | City
 
Ten-year-old Melyana Nurainni said she was submerged under water during the massive flooding
that hit Jakarta in 2007 and with the help of her parents she waded her way through the flowing
water that was higher than her.
 
The curly-haired-girl was sitting on the floor with her friends at her school, SDN Manggarai 03, in
East Jakarta. The girl, who lives by the Ciliwung river fork, remembered the flooding that happened
two years ago with a grin.
 
"The water was so high, my head was underneath it and bobbed up and down," she said giving a
little chuckle.
 
Mely, as she is popularly known, said at that time she was scared but now she was more prepared if
another flood happened.
 
Two years after the deadly flood in Jakarta, Mely is now part of an evacuation team at her school.
Last year, she was among 30 students at her school that took part in a five-month disaster- risk-
reduction training organized by children's NGO Plan Indonesia and The Indonesian Disaster
Prevention Foundation (YTBI).
 
"I know where the safe areas to go when there's flooding. Its at SMP 3 *Junior High School* and the
Manggarai Train station."
 
Plan Indonesia has held similar programs, collaborating with YTBI and Center for Indonesian
Environment Information (PILI) , an environmental organization, as well as five elementary schools in
Jakarta and Bogor.
 
Students from the six schools are now connected in a communication network, where students from
Bogor whose schools are at Ciliwung's upstream can warn students in Jakarta of possible flooding.
 
Plan Indonesia Disaster Risk Reduction Manager Vanda Lengkong said they wanted to show that
children could be part of adaptation efforts in facing climate change.
 
"We want to prove and show to the general public and to the government that children who are
usually classified as a vulnerable group who are viewed as victims or objects can actually do
something significant and
even have a great role," she said.
 
Mely said during the training, she learned about climate change, first aid, and how to identify the
risks of disaster around her school. With
her friends, she participated in a simulation of safety precautions during a disaster.
 
Her cousin, Dwi Ratmono, 11, said he was part of the communications team. He said his task was to
inform the school principal if a possible flood was coming. He said that if he saw that the water in
the Ciliwung River near their school had risen above normal or if he received information from
students from other school about rain in their area he would inform the principal.
 
The problem now however was to extend the knowledge and skills that Mely and Dwi have gained to
the younger students in school as some students that had received training had already graduated
and entered secondary school.

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Mely said of the three members of the evacuation team, one had graduated.
 
SDN Manggarai 3 principal Maryati said the school hopes the training for children will continue,
however, she said she has yet to discuss on how it would be done.
 
Teacher Rice Nurrahma said the teachers needed training as well.
 
"We asked the people from YTBI, *Why is it only the kids who gets training?' and asked them to train
us as well so that we can be prepared when children ask us question about flood and climate
change," she said.
 
 
Vanda said Plan was now focusing on increasing teacher's capacity by involving the School
Committee, an organization in each school that includes teachers, parents, and government officials,
in the program.
 
"We provide them with manual books that are important to keep the program continuous."
 
Teacher Rita Vandawari, who has served in the school since 1994 said that the training was very
important for the children. Many children lived near the river. She noted that along the years,
flooding in Jakarta has been worse every year.
 
"Usually, the water only reached the ankle of an adult's foot, but in 2007, the flood reached more
than a meter."
 
Scientists said one of the effects of global warming was increased storms and floods. In a report
issued in November, 1999 the Britain's Meteorological Office warned flooding in Asia and Southeast
Asia would increase more than ninefold over the coming decades.
 
The impact of climate change, compounded with results of poor urban management makes Jakarta
more prone to floods.
 
Mely said now every time the rain falls, she worried about floods. She also worried about global
warming.
 
"I know that the ice in the North Pole will melt and the world will sink. That scares me."
Mely and Dwi said anytime they try to tell adults about the situation, they were silenced.
 
"They would say, *Shut up, what do kids know?'" Mely said.
 
Some things they do know are that cutting down trees, littering, and settlements by the riverbanks
can increase the risk of flooding. They listed those as causes of flooding.
 
Just next to their school, slum houses made of bamboo stilts and scrap plywood and metal stood by
the Ciliwung River Crook. Piles of plastic garbage float above the water.
 
Rice said that people living in the stilt houses were yet to be educated about sanitation and the
environment.
 
"We can see them throw garbage and they don't seem to be ashamed of it."

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Vanda said that was why children were important to the program. The children are taught about
reuse-reduce-recycle garbage through the program and to plant trees in the schools garden, in the
hope that they would share the knowledge with their families.
 
"They can be agents of change," Vanda said. --

Appendix 3:
The Story of Ye Zhiping
This is an excerpt drawn from a touching longer and very well-written parable by Milo Thornberry
Wednesday, June 18, 2008 http://milosjanusoutlook.blogspot.com/

"Ye Zhiping knew about the shoddy construction of at least one of the Sangzao Middle School
buildings because he had been a young teacher there when the building was constructed.
"Quality inspectors were supposed to be here to oversee construction of this building," he said.
"When the foundation was laid, they should have been here. When the concrete was put into the
pillars, they should have been here. But they weren't. In the end, no government official dared to

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come inspect this building because it was built without any standards…"
"I was among the first teachers who moved into this building, and I was pretty young," Ye said. "Our
awareness of safety wasn't the same as now."
Ye’s attitude changed after he became principal twelve years ago.
If I knew there was a hidden danger, and I didn't do anything about it, then I would be the one
responsible," he said.
From the day he became principal he didn’t waste time. He set about to get the funds for a complete
overhaul of the buildings. One can only imagine the response of the “wise old greybeards” in the
bureaucracy when he sought the money for the reconstruction. The county was poor and Sangzao
was only a farming village. But Ye continued to pester the officials until he got 400,000 yuan (about
$60,000). From 1996 to 1999 he personally oversaw a complete overhaul of the structure.
Most crucial were changes made to concrete pillars and floor panels. Each classroom had four
rectangular pillars that were thickened so they jutted from the walls. Up and down the pillars,
workers drilled holes and inserted iron reinforcing rods because the original ones were not enough,
Ye said. The concrete slab floors were secured so they would be able to withstand intense shaking.
There were probably other greybeards in the school who thought that the principal had more
important things to do than spend his time supervising the renovation.
Ye not only brought structural integrity to the buildings; he also had students and teachers prepare
for a disaster. They rehearsed an emergency evacuation plan twice a year.
On May 12, Principal Ye was in a town fifty kilometers away when the earthquake came. As he
worked his way back to his school he saw the rubble to which buildings had been reduced on the
way. On the day that 10,000 students were crushed by collapsing school buildings, 1,000 of them in
a school less than 20 miles away, the students at Sangzao Middle School managed to evacuate in
less than two minutes.
The students lined up row by row on the outdoor basketball courts…. When the head count was
complete, their fate was clear: All 2,323 were alive.
Students and parents credited “Angel Ye.”
“We’re very thankful,” Qiu Yanfang, 62, the grandmother of a student, said as she sat outside the
school knitting a brown sweater. “The principal helped ease the nation’s loss, both the psychological
loss and the physical loss.”
These days, students are seen darting in and out of the school to retrieve books, ducking under blue
tape clearly marked danger. The building looks secure enough, but not to Principal Ye. He said it has
to be torn down and a new one built, not simply to withstand an 8.0 that came this time, but to
withstand an 11 or 12. And he expects to be there to see that it is built right."

Appendix 4:

Islanders survived tsunami thanks to elders


SIMEULUE ISLAND, Indonesia (AP) — The ground shook so hard, people couldn't stand up when the
massive earthquake rattled this remote Indonesian island — the closest inhabited land to the
epicenter of the devastating temblor.

But unlike hundreds of thousands of others who thought the worst was over when the shuddering
stopped, the islanders remembered their grandparents' warnings and fled to higher ground in fear of
giant waves known locally as "semong."

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Within 30 minutes, Simeulue became the first coastline in the world to experience the awesome
force of the Dec. 26 tsunami. But only seven of the island's 75,000 people died — saved by the
stories passed down over the generations.

"After the earthquake, I looked for the water to suck out," said Kiro, 50, who like many Indonesians
uses one name. "I remember the story of the 'semong' and I ran to the hill."

Simeulue's northern coast is about 40 miles from the spot where the magnitude 9.0 earthquake
shifted the ocean floor along a fault line west of Sumatra Island with enough force to send waves
racing across the Indian Ocean.

Waves as high as 33 feet smacked ashore here, but most people had fled because of the stories
about the "semong" that killed thousands in 1907.

"Everyone ran to the hills," said Randa Wilkinson of the aid agency Save the Children. "They took
bicycles and motorbikes and wheelbarrows and piled the kids in whatever they could get them in."

Suhardin, 33, said that when the quake struck he didn't think about his grandmother's stories about
the 1907 disaster because nothing happened when another big temblor shook the island three years
ago. It was only when a man from another village ran past shouting "Semong! Semong!" that
Suhardin and others from Laayon village fled.

"We were just thinking that God was doing this," he said. "This is because God is angry."

The power of the waves is visible all along Simeulue's picturesque coast: Huge cracks and gashes scar
the remains of thick concrete walls that once supported village mosques, bridges lie crumbled in
streams running to the ocean and deep fissures split roadways.

The island's northern shore took a direct hit from the waves, which left little standing. Along the
western shore, the tsunami spared some villages and destroyed others, leaving a path of snapped
palm trees, flattened houses and power poles dangling over roads.

The earthquake tipped the island up 4 feet on one side, exposing rugged blocks of coral reef along
parts of the northern coast, said Taufik, an Indonesian official who surveyed the island for the
government's meteorological and geophysical agency. Palm trees that once shaded white-sand
beaches are now partially submerged on the southern end of the island, which sank 12 inches.

"You can't imagine this and only seven people died," he said. "It's amazing."

He agreed the island's oral history saved countless lives, but noted its lush hills are close to the coast,
allowing people to get to safety. In many other places with broader coastal plains, people had few
places to run.

But tsunamis are rare in the Indian Ocean and many people in the dozen countries hit by the waves
did not know about their potential to swallow tens of thousands of lives in seconds. When the
inrushing waves sucked shallow coastal waters out to sea, many people stood on beaches watching
or collecting fish flopping on the sand instead of fleeing.

On Simeulue's western coast, survivors stood helplessly on hillsides looking down on the wall of
water sweeping entire villages out to sea.

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"We watched what we had — everything — was gone," said Sukirno, 50. "We stayed in the hills for
one week because we were scared."

Some are so traumatized they have gathered planks of wood and built shanties along a road high on
a hill overlooking what is left of their seaside village. As aftershocks continue — some registering
magnitude 6.0 — they say they are in no hurry to return to the lowlands.

But many people have begun rebuilding along the shore, starting with crude wooden shacks on what
is left of concrete foundations.

They say they will pass the story of the semong down to future generations, even if another disaster
never happens.

"I don't want to see a lot of people die," said Siti Marwani, 25, balancing a child on her hip. "I have to
talk about it with my grandchildren."

Appendix 5 Aberfan Disaster Wales UK

At 9.15 am on Friday, October 21, 1966 a waste tip slid down a mountainside into the mining village
of Aberfan, near Merthyr Tydfil in South Wales. It first destroyed a farm cottage in its path, killing all
the occupants. At Pantglas Junior School, just below, the children had just returned to their classes
after singing All Things Bright and Beautiful at their assembly. It was sunny on the mountain but
foggy in the village, with visibility about 50 yards. The tipping gang up the mountain had seen the
slide start, but could not raise the alarm because their telephone cable had been repeatedly stolen.
(The Tribunal of Inquiry later established that the disaster happened so quickly that a telephone
warning would not have saved lives.) Down in the village, nobody saw anything, but everybody
heard the noise. Gaynor Minett, an eight-year-old at the school, remembered four years later:

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It was a tremendous rumbling sound and all the school went dead. You could hear a pin drop.
Everyone just froze in their seats. I just managed to get up and I reached the end of my desk when
the sound got louder and nearer, until I could see the black out of the window. I can't remember any
more but I woke up to find that a horrible nightmare had just begun in front of my eyes.

The slide engulfed the school and about 20 houses in the village before coming to rest. Then there
was total silence. George Williams, who was trapped in the wreckage, remembered that 'In that
silence you couldn't hear a bird or a child'.

144 people died in the Aberfan disaster: 116 of them were school children. About half of the
children at Pantglas Junior School, and five of their teachers, were killed.

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