Japan advises Indonesia on disaster management

By Heru Andriyanto and Christian Lee

Indonesian representatives received many inputs from Japan on how to manage disasters, such as tsunamis, earthquakes, landslides and soil liquefaction, during an intensive meeting in Miyagi and Tokyo on April 25-27.

Japan has become an example for Indonesia because of its experience in handling similar disasters. In 2011, a large earthquake triggered a tsunami that swept across the east coast of Japan. It took years to rebuild the cities hit by the tsunami.

A group of representatives of various Indonesian ministries, led by National Development Planning Agency (Bappenas) official Velix Wanggai, also visited cities affected by the 2011 tsunami and met with their mayors to discuss the policies and actions they implemented to recover from the disaster.

"We learned how to reorganize a city, spatial planning to mitigate disasters, relocation strategies, and also how citizens are involved in rehabilitation and reconstruction [after a disaster]," Velix said.

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The 2011 earthquake and tsunami that hit Higashimatsushima in Miyagi Prefecture is the biggest disaster in the city's history. About 65 percent of the city's land area was submerged and 1,100 residents were killed.

In the aftermath, the city decided to take drastic steps to mitigate similar disasters in the future, which Takafumi Kawaguchi, head of post-disaster reconstruction, presented to the group.

These steps include identification of disaster areas, provision of temporary housing, searching new locations, calculating compensation and construction of new settlements in safer areas. Kawaguchi said the Japanese government takes the motto, "build back better," to heart.

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