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View all search resultsCianjur quake points to disaster mitigation flaws
Disaster management experts say that the nation's policies need to incorporate lessons from Monday's Cianjur earthquake and shift their focus from mitigation to preparedness, with an emphasis on a bottom-up approach in local communities.
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T
he deadly earthquake that struck on Monday in Cianjur regency, West Java, has highlighted the shortcomings in the nation’s disaster preparedness, sparking calls for more disaster risk reduction at a time when policymakers have focused more on disaster response.
Located on the Pacific Ring of Fire, natural disasters are a common occurrence across the Indonesian archipelago. Data from the National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) show that over 3,000 natural disasters resulting in the deaths of more than 700 people were recorded in 2021 alone.
In 2018, more than 5,000 people lost their lives to natural disasters, the majority in the devastating 7.4-magnitude earthquake and tsunami that struck Palu, Central Sulawesi, in September.
As the death toll continues to rise with dozens still unaccounted for in the aftermath of the Cianjur quake, disaster management experts bemoaned that authorities seemed none the wiser.
Policymakers had yet to learn from the mistakes made in the wake of such disasters, said Muhammad Habib Dzakwan, a policy researcher at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Jakarta.
He noted that the nation’s disaster policies leaned more toward offering stopgap solutions in disaster response, as opposed to investing in preventive measures to mitigate future risks.
“When a disaster occurs, our policymakers are more concerned with disaster response, not preparedness,” Dzakwan told The Jakarta Post. “What we need is political commitment […] from the government to prioritize continuity in addressing natural disasters.”
