'We can't be afraid': Rebuilding in Indonesia's tsunami zone leaves city in peril
By Heru Asprihanto and Kanupriya Kapoor
When 12-meter (39-foot) waves slammed into Banda Aceh on the northern tip of Indonesia’s Sumatra island on Boxing Day in 2004, Arif Munandar lost his wife, three sons, and 20 other members of his family as much of the city was obliterated.
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Fifteen years on, Munandar and tens of thousands of others have been allowed to rebuild in the same low-lying areas of Banda Aceh despite continuing risks of tsunami and other coastal hazards like flooding, Reuters found. Officials and experts say it’s because of lax law enforcement, a lack of government resources for relocation, and an entrenched reluctance on the part of many survivors to abandon their lives and livelihoods near the coast.
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Immediately after the disaster, the government considered banning construction within a two-kilometer (1.2 mile) coastal buffer zone. But the plan was dropped after communities, many dependent on fishing, took to the streets to protest such attempts to move them away from their ancestral lands and livelihoods.
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Srinivasa Tummala, an oceanographer who heads the Indian Ocean Tsunami Warning and Mitigation System, says governments in Indonesia and the region need to do more to control coastal populations and prepare communities by holding regular tsunami drills, marking out evacuation routes, constructing shelters, and enforcing minimum building standards.
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