Indonesia mudflow breaks barriers, injures six

[AlaskaDenise]

(While we're discussing H5N1, Dengue, Chikingunya, etc.....all the diseased in Indonesia, my sister (preparing for a trip to Jakarta) relayed this underpublicized event that is disastrous for the people of Surabaya.......this mud is washing away villages, inundating crops, etc.)

Indonesia mudflow breaks barriers, injures six
26 Sep 2006 04:57:00 GMT
<!-- 26 Sep 2006 04:57:00 GMT ## for search indexer, do not remove-->Source: Reuters

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A villager searches for his belongings, which were washed away by leaking hot mud from an oil and gas exploration operated by local company PT Lapindo Brantas, in Sidoarjo, East Java, August 30, 2006.
REUTERS/Sigit Pamungkas
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By Hari Retnowati

SURABAYA, Indonesia, Sept 26 (Reuters) - Barriers built to control a torrent of mud gushing out from an exploratory oil well in Indonesia failed to hold late on Monday, injuring six workers and inundating nearby villages.


Several experts have said the mudflow, which started to spurt in late May, could have been triggered by a crack about 6,000 feet (1,800 metres) deep in East Java province's Banjar Panji well.


However, a group of international scientists said this week the mudflow might be a natural phenomenon that could be impossible to stop.


The mud has swamped four villages over an area larger than Monaco, displacing more than 10,000 people and highlighting the chequered environmental practices in exploiting resources in Indonesia.


The Monday night barrier breaches had been predicted by hundreds of villagers living near the sand-and-gravel dykes who fled the area last week.

But, several site workers who stayed in the abandoned houses failed to anticipate the flood.


"Around 9 p.m. (1400 GMT), I heard thunder and my bed shook. When I woke up, hot mud was already knee deep," said escavator operator Effendi, who suffered bruises.


The surge injured five of his colleagues. One had burns from waist to ankle.

In Jakarta, European scientists said the flow might be coming from an emerging mud volcano.


The Media Indonesia daily newspaper on Tuesday quoted geologist Adriano Mazzini from Norway's Oslo University saying the burst might be unstoppable and that guessing the timing of the flows and their possible end could be impossible.


That theory has been raised before by a few Indonesian scientists and those working for well operator PT Lapindo Brantas Inc. which disputes the mud is directly connected with the drilling operation at its Banjar Panji well.


Engineers hired by Lapindo, including U.S. and Australian experts, have failed to stop the flow of around 50,000 cubic metres (1.75 million cubic feet) of hot mud every day.


The ongoing crisis has forced the local government in East Java province to allow the channeling of the muddy water into a nearby river, despite concerns it could pollute the ocean, a source of income for millions living on Java's eastern coast.


"We are racing against time. The rainy season is near and we must reduce the pressure against the dykes," Sidoarjo deputy regent Syaiful Illah told Reuters.


Jakarta officials want to remove the water from the mud, treat it and then allow it to flow into the sea through a 20 km (12 mile) pipeline which may take months to be approved.


(Additional reporting by Achmad Sukarsono in JAKARTA)

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[Sonny]

Re: Indonesia mudflow breaks barriers, injures six

Here's a really well done web site with extensive coverage of the hot mud starting May 2006.

http://hotmudflow.wordpress.com/2006/10/03/laut-lumpur-lapindo-dalam-foto-detikcom/


jrkindonesia's photos.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jrki/

 

[Gert van der Hoek]

Re: Indonesia mudflow breaks barriers, injures six

The strange, slow-motion disaster of the mud volcano

November 28, 2007

A seemingly unstoppable mud volcano has displaced thousands of Indonesians.

By Simon Montlake | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

On one side of the levee, a line of trucks waits on a clogged, two-lane road under a broiling sun. On the other, a vast lake of mud stretches to the horizon. Neither appears to be moving.

In the distance, a trail of white smoke rises from a hole in the ground where the mud flow began 18 months ago. Despite attempts to stanch the sludge, such as by dropping giant concrete balls from helicopters into the fissure, the mud continues to gush, swallowing everything in its path.

Prone to earthquakes and volcanoes, Indonesia is no stranger to natural disasters. But what befell this densely populated slice of Java Island was, by most accounts, a man-made calamity.

Last May, an Indonesian energy company drilling for natural gas accidentally opened a fissure in the ground from where hot, viscous mud began erupting. The unstoppable stinking ooze has since swallowed up 11 towns, destroying homes, factories, schools, and farms, and forcing some 16,000 people to uproot.

But its calm oily surface is deceptive. The mud, which contains heavy metals and chemicals such as benzene and sulfurdioxide, has also contaminated rivers and wells in a city-sized area that was semi-industrial farmland and a shrimp production zone. Indonesia's national planning agency has put the economic damages at $334 million a month and says the final bill could be as high as $8.6 billion.

A network of dams now holds back the mud, and engineers are trying to pump some of the sludge out to sea. Already, an estimated 1 billion cubic feet of mud has inundated an area of 2.5 square miles.

"Every day that goes by, we hope it will stop," says Ahmad Zulkarnaen, a spokesman for a special disaster relief agency.

By now, though, the mud volcano has become an implacable hazard around which daily life flows. Scruffy men appear at gridlocked junctions to direct traffic for a few cents. Displaced entrepreneurs scout out new sites for their factories and press for more compensation.

Many are still furious at Lapindo Brantas, the energy company. It blames the eruption on an earthquake that struck Central Java two days earlier, a theory disputed by most foreign geologists. A presidential decree mandated a $412 million compensation fund, but the company has insisted on paying 20 percent now and the rest within two years.

At an outdoor market where around 700 homeless families are living, Sunarto, a businessman, says he refuses to accept the 20 percent, worth about $6,500 based on the value of his substantial property. He says he and other villagers prefer to stay together as a community, but can't restart their lives elsewhere without adequate up-front compensation.

Having lost his backyard cigarette factory to the mud, Sunarto is trying to diversify into chicken-rearing. But the closure of a damaged toll road has snarled traffic for miles, putting a damper on his plans.

"The local economy has collapsed. The traffic is out of control. People don't have money to spend, because they've lost their jobs. Even if you want to start a business, there's nobody buying anything," he says.

The disaster has become a political liability for President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, whose hesitant response was complicated by his ties to Minister of Public Welfare Aburizal Bakrie, a prominent businessman whose family-run conglomerate owns Lapindo. Political opponents say that Mr. Bakrie, formerly chief economics minister, only kept his cabinet post in an April reshuffle because he is a financial backer of President Yudhoyono, who faces reelection in 2009.

Whatever the political calculations in Jakarta, disgruntled residents here blame both parties for their plight. A painted banner across an abandoned stretch of toll road in the disaster zone reads "Lapindo + Government = Madness."

The onset of monsoon rains adds urgency to the task of the engineers who must reinforce the levees to prevent the ooze from spreading. "The risk is that the rain will weaken the sandbags [inside the levees], so we need to pump out more mud from the dams," says Mr. Zukarnaen.

Outside the dam, new fissures keep opening up, usually small bubbles of methane gas and water that quickly draw a crowd. As with the big hole, engineers prefer to manage the flows, instead of trying to close them, as this might trigger a bigger explosion elsewhere.

An eventual fix for the mudflow could be years away. In June, Japan offered to lend Indonesia $110 million to build a 130-foot high dam around it. Japanese scientists say that the weight of the exposed mud, once it dried, could act as a lid on the hole, an Indonesian minister said. But a decision on Japan's offer is pending.

Meanwhile, the mud keeps flowing. Sri Mulyani and the other remaining residents of Renonkenongo, a village that was inundated last November, have been ordered to evacuate. Their village will soon be used as a runoff channel.

A mosque still stands on the main road, and Friday prayers draw dozens of sarong-clad worshipers. But most houses are submerged.

"At the beginning, I thought the problem could be fixed … but now I know I will never live here again," says Ms. Mulyani.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1128/p01s04-woap.html?page=2

 

[Gert van der Hoek]

Re: Indonesia mudflow breaks barriers, injures six

Indonesia’s Big Muddy

Tag it:Lisa Murray

22 August 2008

More than two years on, the mud is still flowing in East Java.

It bubbles, hisses and creeps menacingly close to the top of the dam wall hastily built to contain the disaster zone. So far the mud has drowned 14,000 homes, 33 schools, 65 mosques, a major toll road and an orphanage and it keeps coming at the rate of more than 20 Olympic swimming pools every day. So it's hard to believe that Aburizal Bakrie, the powerful government minister whose family owns the company at the center of the mudflow disaster, would be treated like a king by local villagers, but that's exactly what he claimed in a speech last week.

"If two years ago I came there the people would shout at me," he said. But more recently, "I went there to the new villages, they are kissing my hand."

Geologists, scientists, non-governmental organizations and many victims all blame irresponsible drilling by gas company Lapindo Brantas, a subsidiary of the Bakrie-family owned Energi Mega Perseda, for the disaster. But the company, backed by two court rulings, is insisting the mud volcano, which first erupted on May 29, 2006, was triggered by an earthquake in Yogyakarta, 250 km away.

As if to prove its clean record, it was even cited by the Environment Ministry earlier this month for complying with environmental standards. The award prompted embarrassment from officials and was soundly denounced by environmentalists.

Despite Lapindo's claim of faultlessness, it is paying 4 trillion rupiah (US$437 million) in compensation to villagers who lost their homes to the mudflow. Most people seem to have received 20 per cent of their payment but they are still waiting on the rest.

The compensation is only a fraction of the 26 trillion rupiah that the disaster is estimated to have cost the region. That's just the value of lost assets and doesn't include the disruption to trade and industry caused by destroyed roads, buried farms and thousands of homeless people.

Around the site, the goodwill toward Lapindo that Bakrie describes is nowhere to be seen.

Just four days after his hand-kissing proclamation, a protest by 100 villagers disrupted Independence Day celebrations near the disaster site to demand full payment of the money promised to them. On the walls of a makeshift refugee camp down the road, people have written "Lapindo Detention Centre" and on Tuesday Asia Sentinel witnessed villagers slashing the tires of a Lapindo vehicle at the scene of a new gas leak that had caught fire within meters of surrounding homes.

Gas leaks are increasingly common around the site as the weight of the mud causes the ground to sink and trapped gas makes its way to the surface.

At a small cafe just up the road from the latest leak, the spokesperson for the government's disaster response agency, Badan Pelaksana Penanggulangan Lumpur Sidoargo (BPLS), sat chain-smoking clove cigarettes.

It had been a stressful day.

"Emotions heat up and people get angry but they know I am not the person to blame," said Ahmad Zulkarnaen.

He had been called out to Jalan Flamboyan, where another gas leak was on fire and angry villagers had gathered to protest. Their houses sit just outside the official disaster area and so far they don't qualify for compensation.

Almost every day, he is called out to sites like this or he fields complaints from locals about respiratory problems and severe headaches caused by the noxious gas as well as the lack of compensation. BPLS is also charged with protecting locals from new gas leaks, maintaining the dam walls, monitoring the Lapindo payments, using government funds to rebuild infrastructure and overseeing attempts to actually stop the mudflow. So far, four different strategies, including plugging the hole with cement balls, have proven useless. Now the focus is on shipping the mud out to sea via the Porong River.

"The priority now is on social problems," said Zulkarnaen. "Some say the flow can be stopped, some say it cannot. We have tried four ways and they have all failed."

He wouldn't be drawn into the debate about whether the mudflow was caused by Lapindo's drilling mistake or the earthquake in Yogyakarta.

"I'm not qualified to say whether it was a natural disaster or not," he said. "I will leave that to the legal process."

Meanwhile, villagers are left to live with the consequences.

Hadi Wiyanto, who runs the warung or small café where Zulkarnaen sought some respite, showed us the bubbling well in the courtyard of his now-abandoned house.

Every now and then water spurts up about half a meter and the smell of gas is overpowering. The house is not in the official mudflow area so his family hasn't received any compensation. No one lives in the house anymore because it's too dangerous but some male family members sleep there to guard the property.

"We have no compensation," Wiyanto said. "There is nothing. It is not safe to live here."

The best can be said is that some locals have made a living out of the disaster.

Iyek, a former factory worker, now ferries tourists, journalists and NGO workers around the site on his motorbike. He has his own tour worked out and keeps up to date on where the biggest leaks cause the mud to bubble and spit water meters into the air. He also sells DVDs about the disaster for 30,000 rupiah each.

Looking over a dried bed of mud, he points to where his factory once stood and also indicates where a famous labor activist was murdered.

But landmarks are fast disappearing. Just a year ago, you could see the rooftops of houses peeking above the mud but now all that is left in this particular area are the tip of a mosque, the top floor of a furniture factory and some dead trees.

Iyek's family has so far been given 24 million rupiah for his house and land that were buried under the mud. He is waiting on another 92 million rupiah that should have been paid in May.

He has gone from earning 750,000 rupiah per month to between 30,000 and 150,000 rupiah per day. So some months he is actually better off. Still, there is plenty of competition, with at least hundreds of other villagers selling DVDs and operating as tour guides.

Other locals have been employed to guard the disaster site.

At one post, there are 18 men standing around in hard hats and gumboots.

Some are standing in groups smoking, others sleeping; none are wearing masks. Two of them break the boredom by racing on big dirt motorbikes along the 200m stretch of road to the main gaseous crater.

A team from the United Nations Environment Program is currently putting the finishing touches to a new report, which will lay out the best disaster response options for Indonesia.

Its main author, John McLachlan-Karr, says the mudflow has started to slow and may even stop some time over the next 10 years. But in the meantime the dam walls built to contain it are too steep and sit on unstable ground, making them almost impossible to maintain.

"There is a plan from the local government to move people out of surrounding areas but so far nothing has been done," he said.

As far as disaster responses go, he says, shipping the mud out to sea via the Porong River is the least costly and least damaging option.

While it's not ideal, because it disrupts the river system and dramatically increases the risk of flooding in nearby Surabaya, Indonesia's second largest city, it seems to be the best option.

"Compared to the scale of the disaster, this is a relatively small price to pay," he said.

Meanwhile, compensation is only just starting to trickle out to the estimated 75,000 people who have been affected by the disaster.

"Lapindo always imply they give this money for nothing," said Winarko, a volunteer at the environmental group Wahli.

"But that's bullshit. They get ownership of the land and have so far only paid 20 per cent of the price. Every time there's a deadline, they make a public show of paying something. They might pay 20 people something."

There are still 573 families, about 2000 people, living at the refugee camp in Porong market. They sleep in 6m by 4m tents and share 15 toilets. Deliveries of clean water and food have long been stopped.

As many as 10,000 people have lived at the market place over the past two years.

One of its residents, Witanto, says most of the remaining people at the camp haven't received any compensation. They don't have documents proving they owned their land and they fear if they move, they will never receive any money.

Those with documents can apply for a property at the Bakrie-owned Kahuripan Nirwana (Heavenly Life) village housing complex, about half an hour's drive from the mudflow site. The complex has a long drive with manicured gardens and big leaf-shaped sculptures. Rows of almost finished houses line the block but many people don't want to live here because it's too far away from their work and lacks the community feel of their old village streets.

Builders said this week that 4,000 houses would be built but only about a quarter were close to being finished. People submit their applications in a big hall at the front of the complex.

One man, who preferred not to be named, said he was trying to swap the land title for his buried home for one of the new houses in the complex. Not because he wanted to live there but so he could try and sell it rather than wait for the remaining compensation payment.

In his national Independence Day address last week, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said all funds were expected to be disbursed to victims by the end of the year. But locals are skeptical. Who could blame them?

http://www.asiasentinel.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1394&Itemid=31