Yudhoyono also announced that he would head to Yogyakarta on Friday evening to monitor the situation closely. He only returned to Jakarta on Wednesday after a two-day visit to the region for a similar purpose.

He said as he addressed a press conference at the Presidential Office that the Indonesian Military (TNI) was now preparing for the brigade, which would be led by a general and consist of health, infantry, marine, logistics and transport battalions.

“They will be assigned to build facilities in the field, including [temporary] hospitals and kitchens, and to assist civilian and military hospitals around the area,” Yudhoyono said after leading a coordination meeting on Merapi mitigation efforts.

“They are expected to begin immediately to prevent more than 150,000 displaced people from panicking, and they will operate vehicles to evacuate people.”

Yudhoyono said the brigade would work under the command of the National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) head, Syamsul Maarif, who, starting Friday, is coordinating all emergency and rescue efforts.

He added that he had raised Syamsul’s status to a minister-level official.

While the 2007 Disaster Mitigation Law and the 2008 BNPB presidential regulation rules the BNPB coordinating authority and its head, it mentioned nothing regarding minister-level status of a head.  

Before being appointed as BNPB head in 2008, Syamsul had been the executive chairman of the less-powerful National Coordinating Agency for Disaster Mitigation (Bakornas PB).

Yudhoyono said the administrations of Yogyakarta and Central Java, two regions most affected by Merapi eruptions, were still functioning, but “given the scale of the disaster” it was better that Syamsul took command.

The President said the police would also assign officers to manage traffic around the areas, which had become chaotic due to waves of fleeing residents, as well as to secure abandoned houses located at a safe distance from the raging volcano.

Given that many fatalities were caused by some residents’ returning to their homes to feed cattle,
despite evacuation warnings, Yudhoyono announced the government would buy the locals’ cattle at agreed-upon prices.

He has especially assigned Coordinating Public Welfare Minister Agung Laksono to deal with the matter.

Agung, who said after the press conference he would temporarily relocate near to the affected areas, is also tasked with coordinating humanitarian aid from the central government to displaced people.

As of Friday, the last counting showed that the government would need to purchase around 19,000 cattle, 7,000 for Yogyakarta and 12,000 for Central Java.

Yudhoyono said although the government would maximize the use of the state budget to provide humanitarian aid for refugees, assistance from others was welcomed.

As Yogyakarta’s Adi Sucipto Airport remains closed due to volcanic ash, the President will first land in the Central Java capital of Semarang before continuing to Yogyakarta by car, where he plans to stay at Yogyakarta’s presidential palace.

Presidential spokesman Julian Aldrin Pasha said the President might move to the Military Academy complex in the nearby town of Magelang, Central Java, if Yogyakarta was uninhabitable.

Julian added the length of the President’s stay would depend on how the situation developed.

On Friday morning, the government widened the danger zone out to a 20-kilometer radius from Mount Merapi, leading to a mass evacuation.

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