5pm Saturday 22 September 2007 field update:
John McGroder, the captain of the surf charter boat Barrenjoey, calls SurfAid Emergency Relief Manager, Tom Plummer, on a satellite phone from Sinaka, Pagai Selatan (South Pagai), which is the southernmost region of the Mentawai chain and where the Barrenjoey crew is currently delivering emergency supplies of rice to the isolated, displaced villagers.
"We did a rice drop to three villages on the eastern side of the southern tip - Mabola, Mangkaulu and Matotonan," John said.
"One hundred per cent of the population is living in camps at night and they are very confused. They're not fishing because they are too scared to go out into the ocean," he said. "There is diarrhea among the kids and other ailments. And they have requested kerosene for their lanterns."
Melaleuca, the third emergency relief boat that SurfAid has dispatched to the islands this week - and carrying a cargo of building, shelter and hygiene kits, plus 25 sacks of rice - will reach this hard-hit Sinaka region tomorrow morning (Sunday 23 September). On board is staff from the Indonesian Red Cross (PMI) and SurfAid.
John McGroder's report of diarrhea in the community is a very serious indication as the communities are camped in such poor sanitary conditions, plus there has been monsoonal rain.
In the worst affected Mentawai villages, before the disaster of the two major earthquakes just over a week ago, up to 32 per cent of children die, according to a 2002 UNESCO study.
The majority of these deaths can be attributed to diarrhea, chest infections, bad or unclean birthing, and malaria. The contributing underlying causes of these deaths are mostly due to malnutrition and anemia in children and pregnant women, both of which work to weaken the immune system.
John McGroder also reports that the coral reefs have risen in that area by about one metre. So this affects safe access to the villages and makes navigation hazardous - making the relief effort that much harder. His crew had to be very careful just getting into the villages, and he's one of the most experienced skippers in the Mentawai.
Christina Fowler, who runs the Hotel Batang Arau in Padang, has been speaking to Professor Kerry Sieh, of Caltech (the California Institute of Technology), who is a renowned earthquake expert for this region.
Sieh and his team have earthquake monitoring stations throughout the Mentawai islands and their data showed that at the village of Parak Batu, halfway up the east coast of Pagai Selatan, the first earthquake moved the land southwest 1.2 metres towards the Indian Ocean, with a downward drop of 19cm.
The second earthquake moved the land 1.78m southwest, and lifted it 31cm.
So the fear of the communities is easy to comprehend when you see statistics like that.
They have heard of the horrendous effects of the giant tsunami in Aceh, just to the north of here, after the massive earthquake in December 2004 and they live in fear of another earthquake and tsunami.
- Kirk Willcox
SurfAid International Communications
Director
kirk@surfaidinternational.org