Is Bali at Risk?

The risk of earthquake and tsunami on Bali is very real. Recent increases in the frequency of seismic activity along the subduction zone where the Eurasian and Australasian tectonic plates meet has resulted in a series of earthquakes and related tsunami affects throughout Sumatra and Java. The government of Indonesia believes that Bali is extremely vulnerable and has recently organized a national tsunami drill in the village of Sanur on December 26, 2006.

Risk and vulnerability analysis carried out by the Meteorology and Geophysics Agency (BMG), has identified the coastal areas of Sanur in the island’s southeast as most vulnerable to a tsunami. There is an urgent need to provide community-based disaster preparedness training to these communities to enable the vulnerable populations to mobilize community contingency strategies. This can be achieved through the formation of community disaster management groups, evacuation plans and disaster management plans. There is also a need to reduce the rising fear and tension within Bali’s coastal communities by providing simple and accurate information that corrects some of the misinformation and myth surrounding natural disasters.

IDEP is currently running a program in Sanur, Bali with a focus on earthquakes and tsunamis. This program is building the capacity of local Indonesian communities and local government institutions in Bali to prepare for and respond to disasters through effective trainings, demonstrations and public awareness campaigning for Community Based Disaster Management (CBDM). These trainings, and associated public awareness campaigning activities are supported by a range of high-impact media,which has been develoved over the past four years by Yayasan IDEP. To date, IDEP's CDBM team has trained over 90 community member from 12 coastal banjar in the villages of Kelurahan Sanur, Sanur kauh and Sanur kelod.

Click here to view a slide show of some of the piloting activities conducted by IDEP’s CBDM team.

IDEP also offer specially tailored CBDM educational activities for children in local communities, by empowering, educating, and enhacing the capabilities of children the CDBM team hopes to make a lasting difference far in to future.Disaster preparedness for children is achieved through appropriate methods such as role-plays, games, story telling and showing related films. These trainings are appropriate for implementation at the kindergarten and elementary school level.

Click here to view a slide show of CDBM traneings conducted in local school.