“I thought it was doomsday […] It just felt like the whole world was going to end,” Istiqorah, 44, recalled of the day a 7.4-magnitude earthquake hit Central Sulawesi — Sept. 28, 2018.

The massive earthquake triggered a deadly tsunami that tore through the Central Sulawesi capital of Palu as well as soil liquefaction in several other areas, including in Balaroa in West Palu, where Istiqorah lived, and Petobo village.

“I fled with my son and my three neighbors along the small road in front of our house. It was like a horror movie; we saw houses moving around quickly and bumping into each other, while people screamed for help. Within seconds, we saw the people and their houses disappear into the earth,” Istiqorah told The Jakarta Post on Saturday while sitting in front of her white tent — her home for the past 12 months.

She said it was a miracle that the five of them managed to escape from the unstable earth and somehow reach a place where the ground was firm. Her son immediately climbed onto the roof of one of the houses there.

For a moment Istiqorah thought they would all make it, but then she saw the skirt of one of her neighbors trapped in the moving soil. The other two neighbors tried hard to pull her out.

“They looked at me and said, ‘Help us! Pull her!’ […] I turned back, I remember my glasses fell down as I reached out my hand to pull her and suddenly the ground gave way and swallowed the three of them in front of me. I was spared because my son screamed at me and pulled me up to the roof,” Istiqorah said.

She stopped speaking for a while and took a deep breath before continuing to share her personal account of the tragedy.

“I’m grateful that I’m alive, but not even for a day have I stopped thinking about the three of them. I wish I could have reached out my hand faster and saved them,” the mother of two said.

Istiqorah later discovered that more than half of her neighbors died that day. Most of their bodies have never not been found. The neighborhood is now just a site of scattered ruins.

Now, the mother of two lives with the other survivors from Balaroa in tents at a camp for displaced people around 6 kilometers from her home.

“Access to water is not that good here, and it is too hot to stay inside the tent during the day. But I’m more concerned when it rains hard as the tents leak,” she said.

However, Istiqorah and many others in the camps do not want to move to temporary housing and prefer to wait for the permanent houses the government has promised to build for them.

“I won’t move anywhere, I will stay here until they build a permanent home for me. I hope it will be available soon,” she said.

Amir DM, a resident from Biromaru subdistrict in Sigi regency, said he would rather rebuild his home than live in temporary housing.

“We have experienced one of the worst disasters and we don’t have any spare life. So, let us build our own homes. We are not simply the subject of a project that you can use to gain money,” Amir, whose house was damaged in the 2018 earthquake, said.

“When Vice President Jusuf Kalla visited us last year, he told us the government would give us Rp 50 million [US$3,529.70] each for houses that were seriously damaged so we could rebuild our own house,” he added.

According to the National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB), 699 huntara (temporary multifamily homes) are available in Palu, Sigi and Donggala, which, in total, contain 8,388 rooms. Meanwhile, the government plans to build 6,050 permanent houses in Palu, Donggala and Sigi.

At a symposium on Friday, Ibnu Asur, the BNPB’s head of rehabilitation and reconstruction of social infrastructure, said the idea of allowing locals to rebuild their own homes was not technically possible.

“If they build the houses on their own, our concern is they will not be earthquake-resistant,” Ibnu said.

Slow recovery

Disaster victims and activists have criticized the government’s sluggishness in handling the reconstruction. The disaster killed more than 4,000 people, with hundreds more still missing. It also destroyed more than 110,000 houses across Central Sulawesi. For Sri Tini Haris, a resident of Palu, and other survivors, life after the disaster is a never-ending struggle. Many of them describe the slow recovery process as a “second disaster”, as they continue to be unable to return to their normal lives.

“It has been a year. It’s too long, sir, ma’am. We’ve suffered too long. The government is shouting ‘Palu tangguh, Palu kuat’ [Palu is strong, Palu is strong]. It’s them, not us. I’ve been trying to be strong this whole year. But how can you be strong when you don’t have money and don’t know what to eat tomorrow? How can you be strong when you live in temporary housing like this? Try to live in tents and huntara for months with no money, and then tell me how to be strong,” Sri, 54, told the Post.

After living in a tent for 11 months with her husband and children, Sri finally moved into a huntara a month ago.

However, Public Works and Housing Ministry spokesperson Endra S. Atmawidjaja defended the reconstruction process, saying it was on track, with the government able to cover all stages properly, from the emergency response, to rehabilitation, planning, design and construction.

“For reconstruction we need thorough planning. We need around nine months to prepare locations that are safe for permanent building that are not within the red-zone areas. We need time to make these assessments,” he said.

Endra added that while plans had already been drawn up, the most challenging part was ensuring people who used to live in red zones were willing to leave their land and move to new locations.

Public Works and Housing Minister Basuki Hadimuljono said earlier this month that the ministry had identified suitable areas in Palu, Donggala and Sigi for permanent housing.

“Properties cannot be built along the Palu Koro fault,” Basuki said in reference to a fracture in the earth’s crust that runs underneath Sulawesi from the Makassar Strait to the northern part of the Boni Gulf in southern Sulawesi.

However, locals have taken issue with how the government has carried out it reconstruction plans in Palu.

“They said we cannot rebuild our houses there, but why is that? They have never provided maps of the red-zone areas. They have never explained to us their reasoning. And while they forbid us from rebuilding houses on our land, we can see that hotels, malls and schools have started operating again in the affected areas. Why have they only forbid us?” Sri said to reporters last Thursday.

Adriansa Manu, coordinator of Koalisi Sulteng Bergerak (Coalition of Central Sulawesi Movement) said the local administration had not provided clear regulations or reasons for prohibiting people from building houses in the red zones.

“We need regulations. You cannot just tell people to leave their land because it’s dangerous. Every neighborhood unit [RT] and community unit [RW] must understand where the secure and dangerous zones in their areas are. And if houses can’t be built in red zones, what are the alternatives?” Adriansa said.

He also said the only map of Central Sulawesi available contained only basic information.

“The existing map provides information about the affected areas. But for future mitigation purposes, we need a much better map, a map of Central Sulawesi based on a study of disaster prone conditions drawn up by experts in geology and geophysics. And this map must be made available to everyone as the basis for city planning,” he said.

The natural disaster that hit Palu last year was not the only massive disaster to hit Indonesia in recent years. In 2006, an earthquake in Yogyakarta killed more than 5,000 people, while in 2004, an earthquake and tsunami killed more than 200,000 people in Aceh.

While the country developed Law No. 24/2007 on disaster management following these tragedies, the country’s disaster management and preparedness continues to be found lacking.

“This great nation has faced multiple and repeated natural disasters but has never learned to prepare itself for future disasters. There is well recorded data on these disasters but we are not learning,” Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Wahli) Central Sulawesi executive director Haris Lapabira said.