My Thoughts on the Sulawesi Twin Disasters

I wrote this article on 3 Oct 2018 in response to questions by the media. One article has since been published by GovInsider: "Three steps for Sulawesi’s first responders".

My condolences to the families of the victims of these very unfortunate twin disasters in Sulawesi. The rescue and recovery efforts of the earthquake and tsunami on 28 Sep 2018 may be affected by the Soputan volcano eruption on 3 Oct 2018. The Indonesian authority said the current alert for Soputan is a level 3 “standby”, which means the community should not be active in all areas within a 4km radius, and flights are unlikely to be affected by the ash emission. However, this eruption has to be closely monitored as more flights are expected to support the rescue and recovery efforts.

From what I read, the Indonesian Government is mobilizing all its resource in such efforts, involving the military, police, the National Agency for Disaster Management (BNPB), and other civilian resources. Foreign countries, including Singapore, have initiated their humanitarian assistance too. The AHA Centre (setup based on the Agreement on the Establishment of the ASEAN Coordinating Centre for Humanitarian Assistance on disaster management signed on 17 Nov 2011) has also started coordinating efforts by fellow ASEAN member countries.

What are three things that first responders in Sulawesi must do? 

We are now in day six (3 Oct 2018) of the twin disasters. There is still very good chance to rescue survivors. The first priority is definitely to search and rescue these survivors, many of whom are likely trapped under rubbles. There are various considerations here:

• Does the Indonesian authority have sufficient rescuers, sniffer dogs, and necessary equipment for such rescue operations? If not, AHA Centre can play an important role to coordinate such personnel and resources from fellow ASEAN member countries to support this massive rescue under the existing agreement.
• To better coordinate such local and foreign rescue efforts, a single agency (may be BNPB) has to be tasked to direct and coordinate all the efforts, to avoid duplication and missing out villages.
• With limited resources, the authorities have to prioritize which cities and villages to focus on for such rescue efforts. The use of population data and aerial surveillance on the extent of destruction are necessary inputs for such decision. Organization such as PDC can even do post-disaster simulation to assess the levels of destructions throughout the province.
• The need for a common operating picture using GIS showing population data, areas affected, levels of destruction, critical infrastructure (functioning medical facilities, runways, etc.), real-time survivors triage locations and number of survivors, real-time rescue personnel and equipment locations, etc.
• Such GIS mapping and data layers are the focus point of a joint Command, Control & Communication (C3) Center to be led by the central coordinating agency mentioned earlier. This is precisely one of the scenarios envisaged by Huawei when we launched the Safe City Compact solution recently.

Concurrently we need to consider the treatment of the injured and caring for the displaced persons:

• If there are insufficient functioning medical facilities in the province (especially with more aftershocks and potential major eruption of Soputan expected), there is a need for a separate operation to evacuate the injured to other provinces/cities.
• For the homeless/displaced people, sanitation problems will lead to more victims. We need clean water supply, food and proper sanitation facilities, and proper housing ranging from school, community hall to tent. Usually there will be many local and foreign organizations offering such items. Again, there is a need for a central agency to collect, collate and distribute such aids.
• Families of the displaced, injured, dead and missing persons will surely be very worried for their loved ones. It is important to have a centralized Victims Identification facility to process and communicate such information, including status and location. Data collection are likely to be decentralized and reported into such centralized facility.
• These efforts can also be centrally coordinated in the C3 Center mentioned above.

The third major concern is crime and public disorder. The police may need to be supported by the military to maintain law and order:

• It is not unusual to see lootings in a major disaster like this one. While some of the people just want to survive because of lack of water and food (this is why taking care of displaced persons said above is crucial), there will be the criminally-minded who want to benefit from such disasters.
• Survivors can be understandably shaken and distraught. They may be susceptible to fake news and rumors that further agitate them. Families with lost members may become more demanding. All these behaviors may lead to public disorder, and even clashes between people.
• In this case, we learnt that prisoners in the Donggala Penitentiary in Central Sulawesi ran riot and set the prison on fire, and at least 100 prisoners managed to escape, severely undermining public safety.
• There is a slight chance that criminals will kidnap vulnerable children during a disaster, and people traffickers may even smuggle them overseas. First responders and immigration officers have to be alert when they see adults with children.

How can officials engage with the community better?

Timely information dissemination and active community engagement are crucial during this time. Reducing anxiety, countering fake news and rumors, giving public warning, providing rescue and recovery information, gaining trust, promoting community collaborations (in line with Huawei’s Collaborative Public Safety, and receiving timely feedback, are important objectives for such community engagement. Some of the considerations:

• Less than 50% of the mobile users use smartphone in Indonesia; the percentage may be lesser in Sulawesi. It means social networking may not be the most effective way of public engagement.
• So in addition to social networking (again there is a need for a central agency to coordinate such communication and engagement), the use of traditional media and SMS are important.
• For urgent public warning, the authority has to work with the telcos to use location based services to issue warnings through SMS.
• The use of non-technological channels are important too. The authorities need to stay in touch with village heads, and even imams, for timely communication and active engagement.
• Be it using new media, traditional media or word of mouth, such channels will not be effective if they are utilized only during disasters. Trust cannot be built overnight; such communication and engagement channels have to be established and practiced during peacetime.

How can they use social media to supplement data from tsunami and earthquake sensors?

Earthquake and tsunami come fast, social media contents are not good enough in the detection of such disasters, unlike say epidemics. But social media contents can be useful to aid in the response to and recovery from such disasters. In past disasters, rescuers were able to pinpoint the location of survivors through monitoring social media. Such monitoring can help in assessing the sentiments of the community too, which is important in preventing any public disorder incident.

Damaged communications infrastructure have hindered both warning systems and post-disaster recovery efforts. What lessons can be learnt from this?

In disaster management, communication is the number one requirement! Be it agency-to-agency, or government-to-community, or people-to-people, communication is the top concern. Many of the recommendations above require communication, both wired and wireless.

With many communication infrastructures destroyed, Huawei on 29 Sep 2018 dispatched engineers and equipment to ground zero to work side by side with the telcos to bring online the public communication networks. We are grateful to the military for the use of their aircraft and vehicle. We now have 11 engineers onsite and more are on standby. After the 16 Apr 2016 Ecuador earthquake, about 300 Huawei staff were directly involved in similar recovery work.

Huawei activated our Business Continuity Management (BCM) plan within 5 minutes after the first earthquake hit Sulawesi to better support our customers. All resources needed were swiftly sourced and allocated. We immediately deployed our OWS-KEA (Operations Web Services - Key Event Assurance) control center which gives real-time report on disaster situation, on-site engineer status, network stability and geographic condition of the site to help us optimize resource allocation in real time. All the information was also shared with the customers simultaneously. 2018 has been a very busy year for Huawei Indonesia. We were there to help after the 5 Aug 2018 Lombok earthquake, and to support the Asian Games that started on 18 Aug 2018, which saw the OWS-KEA used for the first time.

Separately, Huawei has reached out to the authority to offer some of our state-of-the-art solutions to help in the disaster rescue and management efforts. In addition to Safe City Compact I mentioned earlier, we offered our Rapid eLTE Multimedia Critical Communication System and Ruggedized Smart Broadband devices. These technologies were also deployed in the recent rescue of the 12 boys and their coach in northern Thailand:

What can we learn from these disasters globally?

• Public communication infrastructure (wired and wireless) have to be robust and best physically deployed in areas that can withstand earthquake, tsunami, flooding, fire, etc.
• There must be business continuity plans, including backup infrastructure and technology providers that are ready and responsive, such as Huawei.
• Government agencies, especially those in emergency management, must have their own private communication infrastructure (wired and wireless). In times of crisis, public infrastructure’s quality of service will deteriorate either because of damages or heightened usage by the people.
• Emergency management agencies’ private infrastructure, such as fiber optics, microwave and eLTE, must be backed up by easily deployable mobile technologies, such as Emergency Communication Vehicle, satellite communication, and Rapid eLTE.

What can Indonesia do to improve early warning systems?

The volcanoes in Indonesia are among the most active of the Pacific Ring of Fire. They are formed due to subduction zones of three main active tectonic plates namely the Eurasian Plate, Pacific Plate, and Indo-Australian Plate. The Indonesian authority is well aware of the risks the country is facing from earthquake, volcano eruption and tsunami. Various agencies have been working very hard in managing such mammoth tasks.

The Indonesian authorities, like many governments, are taking actions to mitigate the impact of natural disasters. Other things to consider include:

• Risks assessment on areas vulnerable to such disasters. PDC, mentioned above, undertakes such work. Of course a long term solution is to move the population away from such high risks areas, but this is nearly impossible because of a multitude of reasons.
• The next best thing is to build up a community of resilient people and buildings. For people, it is about community engagement that I mentioned earlier. For buildings and infrastructures, there need to be stricter building codes to ensure they can withstand such disasters, or at least lesser impact when destroyed.
• Relevant sensors (e.g. seismic sensor, tsunami buoy, cameras) have to be deployed in such high risks areas for timely data collection, analysis and disaster simulation.
• A public warning system comprising public sirens, location based services, SMS, and social media, must be in good working order.
• People in such high risks areas must be familiar with the drill on what to do and where to go upon receiving such public warning. Plans are not enough, there should be regular simulation exercises to get the authority and people familiar with the plans, including the C3 system and inter-agency collaborations.
• Stockpile of essential items, such as first aid, water, food, tent, and clothing, at designated evacuation meeting points.
• As said earlier, ICT infrastructure, especially those needed to support disaster management should be located away from high risks areas, or at least built to withstand such risks.