Three powerful earthquakes within 20 days in West Nusa Tenggara (NTB) have killed at least 487 people, injured about 7,700 and displaced more than 410,000, but the government has yet to declare it a national disaster, despite a plea from the provincial legislature.

A 6.9-magnitude earthquake rocked the island of Lombok in the province on Aug. 19 at 10:59 p.m. local time, killing at least 10 people as of Monday.

In a letter to President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, the NTB Legislative Council urged the government to declare the series of earthquakes a national disaster to speed up “disaster mitigation, rehabilitation and recovery”.

“We need intensive care and a firm commitment from the government,” reads the letter signed by speaker Baiq Isvie Rupaeda.

According to the letter, dated Monday, the string of mainshocks and hundreds of aftershocks since July 29 has “paralyzed public services in the province”.

However, other officials, including NTB Governor Muhammad Zainul Majdi, think the disaster mitigation measures taken so far have been adequate and already of a national scale, without any such status being formally declared.

“So far, we [the province] have coordinated with the National Disaster Mitigation Agency [BNBP], the National Search and Rescue Agency [Basarnas], the Indonesian Military and the National Police to mobilize personnel and heavy equipment from the central government to help with the recovery and the restoration of damaged buildings,” Zainul said in a statement on Monday evening. The governor added that the help so far had been “a national-scale and all-out effort”.

BNPB head Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said there would be consequences to declaring the natural catastrophe a national disaster. One of them is that “the door to foreign aid is wide open”. He said new problems could sometimes arise from international help, because it would concern “political, economic, social, cultural, defense and security matters”.

“Stop the debate about the national disaster status. The most important thing is to deliver help quickly to the survivors. We have deployed national-scale mitigation measures,” he said in his press statement on Monday.

Cabinet Secretary Pramono Anung said Monday that naming it a national disaster would come at a high price to tourism in the region. “Other countries would issue travel warnings for their citizens, and the areas affected would not only be Lombok, but also neighboring Bali,” Pramono claimed. He seconded Sutopo in saying that the help coming to Lombok was already of “a national scale”.

In a similar vein, Governor Zainul said the islands of Lombok and Sumbawa would be deserted if the government declared it a national disaster. “Our economic growth depends on tourism,” he said.

On Aug. 9, NTB Deputy Legislative Council Speaker Sulhan Mukhlis said that, if the disaster was a national one, the province could get a special allocation from the national budget, including funds for reconstruction.

The BNPB has recorded damage from the quake to at least 72,000 houses, 671 schools, 128 places of worship and 52 health facilities.

The last time Indonesia declared a natural disaster a national one was in 2004 in response to the devastating tsunami, which affected Aceh in particular.

Criteria for issuing the national disaster status are stipulated in Government Regulation No. 21/2008 on the disaster emergency status. The President is the one who can declare a national disaster based on five considerations: The number of casualties, the financial losses, the damage to buildings and infrastructure, the size of the affected areas and the social and economic impact.

President Jokowi said on Monday that he was “preparing a presidential instruction [on earthquake mitigation efforts on Lombok]”, while Vice President Jusuf Kalla is slated to visit Lombok on Tuesday.


— Panca Nugraha, Marchio Gorbiano, Marguerite Afra Sapiie and Arya Dipa contributed to this story from Mataram, Jakarta and Bandung.

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