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here are communities that have been living in disaster-prone areas for generations and are reluctant to move, despite the fact that their life is constantly under threat. Worse yet, they are hardly prepared when the calamity strikes, rendering them easy prey.

Landslides that have claimed nearly 50 lives and displaced hundreds of people in Purworejo, Kebumen and Banyumas in Central Java and Sangihe in North Sulawesi are evidence of poor knowledge about the signs of disaster on the part of local communities, not to mention their lack of familiarity with measures to lessen the impacts.

Given the inadequate capacity to monitor and mitigate natural disasters and recognize early warning signs, it comes as no surprise that any landslide can claim many lives, as was the case in Purworejo over the weekend or in Banjarnegara in 2014.

Over the last six months alone, 28 landslides occurred nationwide. Like floods, landslides appear to be routine incidents. They frequently hit villages sitting on the slopes of a hill, usually after heavy rain, so goes the pattern.

The loss of dozens of lives in the most recent landslides is perhaps because the locals had not expected such heavy rain in June, when the dry season normally starts to peak. The Meteorology and Geophysics Agency has forecast a change in rainfall patterns, but this has not altered the way local communities and the government respond.

We should not blame abnormal weather phenomena, such as heavy rain in dry season or drought in the rainy season, for our failure to minimize, if not prevent, deaths and injuries in the event of a disaster.

We have simply ignored the early warning signs that we have learned since the devastating 2004 tsunami in Sumatra, where some 160,000 people in Aceh alone were killed or went missing.

In a country where natural disasters can strike at any time, the only way to protect our lives is to ensure an early warning system, in the form of natural signs or sophisticated technology, works.

Whenever we are alerted to an impending disaster, ideally we would have time to relocate. The earlier the warning arrives, the greater our chances of survival.

The UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction defines the early warning system as a set of capacities needed to generate and disseminate timely and meaningful warning information to enable individuals, communities and organizations threatened by a hazard to prepare and to act appropriately and in sufficient time to reduce the possibility of harm or loss.

Intervention by the central and local governments is key to helping communities in disaster-prone areas adapt to the early warning mechanism. Investing in early warning equipment is a must, but regular drills, public campaigns and instilling awareness on disaster mitigation among students through the school curriculum are more pressing matters.

The most important, and probably the most challenging, disaster mitigation measure of all is, however, to preserve, rather than harm, the environment.