West Sumatra Plans Coastal Tsunami Shelters
Friday, 23 October, 2009 | 11:54 WIB

TEMPO Interactive, Jakarta: After repeated earthquakes and tsunami scares in West Sumatra, administration at the provincial capital conveyed its plan to build tsunami shelters in the upper parts of existing school buildings in the coastal area.

The Mayor of Padang, Fauzi Bahar said on Friday (23/10) the plan was made after it found difficulties in taking over public land to build secure tsunami shelters for about six hundred thousand residents in the tsunami prone coastal areas.

Fauzi said the administration’s assessment on previous tsunami evacuations also discovered that evacuation methods by preparing reliable exit access to evacuation could not contain the mass of residents trying to flee Padang at once.

“No matter how good we prepare for the access, it must be crowded, like when the quake struck on September 30th, hundreds of thousands of people left the city heading to the east, the traffic was jammed everywhere, that’s why we are want to build shelters near the beaches which could be reached within 15 minutes.” Fauzi explained.

Fauzi said local administration is planning to build the shelters atop of school buildings in Padang beach, Purus, Ulak Karang, Air Tawa, up to Lubu Buaya beach, as the major road construction project on Jalan Alai, to provide wider access for evacuation stalled by the refusal of some of the residents to sale their land to the government for the project.

However some residents in Padang interviewed on Friday said they supported the plan to widen Jalan Alai which heads to the eastern part of the city. Karnik, a 51 year-old female resident of Ulak Karang area said she regretted the slow progress of the project which was planned since 2007. She said when the quake struck on September 30th she and her family fled their house on a car, but was stuck in the traffic shortly after leaving their house. “If the tsunami swept within 15 minutes, thousands of people stuck in the traffic would be killed.”

FEBRIANTI