Indonesia lost Rp514 billion by Wasior, Mentawai disasters

Antara 29 Nov 10;

Jakarta (ANTARA News) - Indonesia suffered a total of Rp514 billion in material losses by the Wasior flash floods in West Papua and the tsunami in Mentawai Islands in West Sumatra, a national disaster management official said.

"The Wasior flash floods caused material losses of Rp280 billion while the funds needed to reconstruct the whole area are estimated to reach Rp370 billion. Meanwhile, The Mentawai Islands tsunami caused a material loss of Rp314 billion with Rp368.2 billion needed to reconstruct the impacted area," Sutopo, director of Disaster Risk Reduction at the National Agency for Disaster Management (BNPB), said here on Monday.

He said the funds to finance reconstruction and rehabilitation of the two regions would come from the 2011 State Budget where a total of Rp4 Trillion was earmarked for disaster management. Meanwhile, the material losses in Yogyakarta province due to Mount Merapi eruptions last Oct 26 were still being calculated.

Sutopo said the material losses counted by BNPB`s personnel recently covered damage to housing, infrastructure, social and economic life of the people in Wasior and Mentawai.

During October 2010, Indonesia was hit by three major disasters in different parts of the country. The first one was flash floods in Wasior, West Papua, on October 3, which took the lives of 124 people and left 123 others missing.

The second disaster was a magnitude-7.7 earthquake and subsequent tsunami in Mentawai Islands District, West Sumatra , on October 25 which killed at least 408 people, caused 303 others to go missing and 23,000 people to lose their homes forcing them to stay in refugee camps.

Just one day after the Mentawai earthquake and tsunami, Mount Merapi, one of Indonesia`s most active volcanoes, started to erupt on October 26, 2010.

A total of 185 people, including Mbah Maridjan, the `spiritual caretaker" of the volcano, were killed, and tens of others were injured. Around 40,000 people were evacuated to safer places. Located on the border between Central Java and Yogyakarta, the volcano had been erupting regularly since 1548.