GEMAMPIR, Indonesia — As this village emptied around her, and the Mount Merapi volcano boomed not too far uphill behind a veil of dust, Puranti stood crying here on Sunday afternoon, frozen with indecision. A few hours earlier, her relatives had gone back to fetch fresh clothes in their village — farther uphill toward Mount Merapi, in an area so close to the volcano’s rim that it had been evacuated days before.
But on Sunday, with eruptions continuing, the authorities were enforcing an evacuation order here in Gemampir, a village that had been considered safe enough to hold evacuees in school buildings despite falling officially inside a danger zone. And Ms. Puranti’s relatives had not come down the volcano yet.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen,” she said, scanning the hundreds of villagers streaming past her for her relatives’ faces. “They’ve gone home and they haven’t gotten back, and I can’t reach them.”
Six days after the Indonesian government said it would force people down from dangerous areas near the volcano, Indonesia has been struggling to do just that. While tens of thousands were now in temporary camps beyond the volcano’s reach, and thousands more were belatedly being moved from the mountain’s western and southern slopes, many were also going back uphill to homes on the less affected eastern flank.
People the world over often resist abandoning their homes in the face of rumbling volcanoes, advancing brushfires or other natural threats, but perhaps none more so than residents of Java in Indonesia, one of the most densely populated areas in the world.
In the nearly two weeks since Merapi’s first deadly release of ash, many evacuated residents have kept going back to their villages to check on the welfare of their cows, prized possessions that typically constitute rural Indonesians’ greatest assets. Others have stubbornly refused to leave, in the belief that a local spiritual leader or guardian spirit will shield them from harm.
Last week, a visibly frustrated President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono attributed earlier deaths to residents’ refusal to leave, blaming their beliefs in “superstitious news” and pleading for a “scientific point of view.” But, as with many things in Indonesia, the authorities share the blame: they have been unable to carry out the president’s directive to remove the recalcitrant by force, or have done so selectively. Gemampir should have been evacuated days ago. But not only had the authorities failed to do so, the village’s schools were being used to house evacuees like Ms. Puranti and her relatives.
Partly as a result, it was not clear how many people from the villages surrounding the volcano had been evacuated, with the government estimating 278,000 and the Red Cross, 135,000. More than 135 people have been killed in a series of increasingly intense eruptions, according to the National Disaster Management Agency, almost 100 of them since a huge eruption on Friday shot out superheated clouds of gas and debris that incinerated people, animals and homes.
The authorities said, by and large, that they had the crisis under control, with enough food, medicine and shelter to meet the basic requirements of those driven from their homes. But in some areas, coordination and supplies were still lacking.
Even in the best organized areas, the lingering threat from the unpredictable volcano — which continued to erupt Sunday — meant evacuees crowded atop one another in camps would be at increasing risk of disease as the days and weeks progressed, officials and the Red Cross said.
“Under the circumstances, the response has been pretty good so far, but as in the case of any volcano, it’s wait and see,” said Phillip Charlesworth, head of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies delegation in Indonesia. “But something needs to be done for those people staying on top of one another.”
“A lot of people won’t be able to return to their homes and livelihoods,” he said. “Long-term recovery will be difficult.”
At Gemampir, about eight miles from the volcano’s rim, villagers stayed on despite the authorities’ declaring a nine-mile danger zone on Wednesday. Even after the danger zone was extended on Friday to 12 miles, the more than 2,000 villagers took in 400 evacuees from farther uphill rather than leave.
Standing by a motorbike with his wife, mother and daughter, Suyadi, a local farmer, said he was disappointed that the evacuation zone had not been enforced.
“I’m worried, I’m really worried,” he said, as villagers piled into trucks and cars and crammed onto motorbikes. “They should have told us the other day to evacuate.”
Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, the National Disaster Management Agency’s director of disaster risk reduction, said he did not know why the evacuation of Gemampir had come so late.
But he said the government was offering compensation of $780 to $1,300 per lost cow, in part to persuade people to leave their homes. “We hope this will stop people from returning to their villages,” Mr. Nugroho said.
Down the hill, aid volunteers complained that many evacuees east of Merapi had still not been reached by the government.
“Friday’s eruption shattered everything,” said Muhammad Joko Saptomo, who organized temporary housing in unofficial camps for 1,500 people in the district of Klaten, east of the volcano. “Everyone had run off for themselves with no coordination for where they were going to go.”
In Yogyakarta City, Sardjito Hospital, the only medical facility in the area with a burn unit, was receiving victims. On Sunday, there were 28, most with burns to more than 70 percent of their bodies, said Dr. Sigit Priohutomo. The hospital was expecting ventilators and other supplies from Jakarta and elsewhere, he said.
“If we continue to experience small eruptions, I think we are O.K. because the areas have been evacuated already,” Dr. Priohutomo said. “But if there is an even bigger explosion, it’s trouble.”
Aubrey Belford reported from Gemampir, and Norimitsu Onishi from Jakarta, Indonesia.
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Tens of thousands displaced by Merapi volcano

Peter Cave reported this story on Monday, November 8, 2010 08:12:00

TONY EASTLEY: Almost 300,000 people have now been displaced from their homes as a result of the worst eruption of the Merapi volcano in central Java since the 1870s. After almost two weeks, the death toll passed 130 at the weekend as the eruption caused the cancellation of most international and domestic flights.

Foreign affairs editor Peter Cave filed this report for AM.
PETER CAVE: The government has issued a 20-kilometre exclusion zone around Merapi where most of those who have died have been suffocated by ash and poisonous gases or burnt alive by pyroclastic flows.

But the devastation covers many hundreds of square kilometres of surrounding countryside where ash as thick as sand and fine as cement powder has created a filthy grey wasteland where those who have stayed behind have to cover the faces with paper masks or respirators to breath and where all the trees have collapsed and wilted under the weight of the clinging muck as have roofs and awnings.

On the outskirts of Jogjakarta the huge multistoried Maguwoharjo Stadium has become a temporary shelter for tens of thousands of the hundreds of thousands driven from their homes. 

(Sound of kerosene burners)

In a military kitchen huge kerosene fired burners produce rice by the wheelbarrow load and a constant stream of trucks bring in food in boxes and crates along with clothing, medicine and other relief supplies. Every so often the huge and threatening outline of Mt Merapi is visible through the haze behind the stadium.

(Man speaking)

"I want to go home," says this man, "but in conditions like this what can you do? I can't even think."

(Woman speaking)

This woman says she is afraid, even though here there is all she needs.

(Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono speaking)

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono visited while we were there and he urged people to be patient and to obey the directions of the authorities - mindful that as late as a few days ago whole villages had been wiped out by scorching clouds of ash and after almost two weeks there is no end in sight.

He promised help to rebuild and repair the damage once the eruption is over but what nobody can say is when that will be, and whether it will end with a whimper or one almighty bang.

This is Peter Cave in Jogjakarta reporting for AM.
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