TRIBUNPONTIANAK.CO.ID, LANDAK – Wakil Ketua Presedium Dewan Kehutanan Nasional, Glorio Sanen mengharapkan pemerintah melakukan langkah penanggulangan akibat bencana banjir yang tejadi di sejumlah kecamatan di Kabupaten Landak.
“Tentunya penanggulangan pasca bencana secara holistik atau secara utuh. Misalnya penyakit yang disebabkan setelah bencana banjir, karena dalam undang-undang bencana itu ada tiga tahapan yang harus dilakukan,” ujarnya di Ngabang pada Rabu (6/9/2017).
Menurut Glorio, sekarang ini kesannya tanggap daruratnya memang cepat. Tapi efek setelah bencana juga harus dipikirkan.
Sedangkan jika berbicara masalah pencegahan, pemerintah dalam hal ini BPBD punya catatan kenapa bencana terjadi dan punya sumber. Misalnya aliran sungai sudah tidak bagus, atau jangan-jangan daya serap air sudah lemah.
“Intinya hal-hal yang bisa dicegah, karena perbuatan atau karena kebijakan bisa dicegah. Cuma kalau murni bencana alam ya tidak bisa, misalnya hujannya deras berminggu-minggu tentu tidak bisa kita tolak banjirnya. Walau pun tata kelola baik,” tuturnya.
Maka dari itu, untuk masalah pencegahan pihaknya hanya mendorong kebijakan pemerintah yang lebih ramah lingkungan.
“Intinya kita serahkan ke BPBD, dan mereka punya tim untuk melihat apa penyebab bencana itu terjadi,” ungkapnya.
Dengan demikian Glorio menegaskan, masalah penanggulangan pasca bencana harus dilakukan secara holistik. Seperti di sektor pertanian yang pangan-pangan rakyat terendam atau berpotensi gagal panen. Kemudian dari aspek kesehatan, infrastruktur, pendidikan.
“Maksudnya dikerjakan secara holistik dengan melihat secara utuh peristiwa tersebut. Sebab apakah kalau air surut setelah banjir masalah itu selesai, tentu tidak. Jadi penaggulangan pasca bencana jauh lebih penting,” pungkasnya.
Update | The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is one of those areas of the government we’d all prefer to never think about, much less deal with personally. But in the wake of Hurricane Harvey’s lashing visit to Houston, it’s worth taking a moment to recognize the agency—and to wonder where it will stand when the next disaster rolls around.
FEMA, which is stashed away under the Department of Homeland Security, oversees both physical and financial recovery in the wake of disasters (both natural disasters and terrorism) and is meant to coordinate other sections of the government to act more efficiently.
The agency’s current administrator, William “Brock” Long, was confirmed for the post by the Senate in June, after this year’s hurricane season began, but brings previous experience with hurricanes from Alabama’s equivalent agency.
According to comments Long made in a press conference held early Wednesday, FEMA’s priority for at least the next couple days is what’s called life-saving and life-sustaining activities. That includes working with the Coast Guard to rescue people, arranging shelters and keeping as many hospitals as possible up and running. Particularly in places like Louisiana, where rain is still falling, they’re also working to make sure people on the ground continue to listen for instructions from local officials as water levels eventually crest.
FEMA’s coordinating role is crucial here—it’s the linchpin that holds together federal employees; other relevant agencies like Health and Human Services; and the Department of Energy, the Coast Guard and National Guard personnel, state agencies and local responders. Although Houston has been drawing the most concern, Harvey has affected people across 50 counties, so coordination is key.
The rescue effort is already huge. Even before the worst of the storm hit, FEMA was gathering drinking water, food and blankets at a temporary base. When 911 call centers were overwhelmed with calls, they were rerouted to the Coast Guard, which has been handling a thousand calls an hour. In Texas alone, more than 230 shelters are open to more than 30,000 people. About 1,800 families have already been placed in hotel and motel rooms across five different states, the fastest way of getting people out of shelters.
More than 9,000 people have taken shelter in Houston’s convention center. Joe Raedle/Getty Images
FEMA is also poised to offer financial support after people reach out to their insurance providers. As of early Wednesday, more than 195,000 people had filed requests, and the agency had already sent $35 million to survivors.
The next wave of priorities will focus on infrastructure, since that helps people get back to their normal routines. Energy is a key piece—not only have large areas lost power but because of Texas’s role as a producer, it’s also important to get refineries and power plants back online. Airports, ports, rail lines, industrial facilities and schools are other important targets in the search for normalcy.
Finally, FEMA will start bringing in trailers and temporary housing, although that effort is limited by the amount of time and money needed to produce these shelters.
Houston residents wait in line to buy groceries after Hurricane Harvey. Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images
But the response to the next Harvey could face even stricter financial constraints if President Donald Trump gets his budgetary wishes for the 2018 fiscal year, which begins October 1. The president’s budget blueprint calls for FEMA’s budget for state and local grants to be cut by $667 million, saying that these grants are unauthorized or ineffective.
The program it explicitly calls out as lacking congressional authorization is the Pre-Disaster Mitigation Grant Program, and a second proposed change would require all preparedness grants to be matched in part by non-federal funds. All of FEMA’s pre-disaster grants are meant to reduce federal spending after disasters, and according to the agency’s website, there’s evidence that $1 in mitigation spending saves $4 in later damages.
Trump’s budget proposal also calls for the elimination of the National Flood Insurance Program run by FEMA, which provides affordable flood insurance. According to the proposal, the program costs the government $190 million; it is also $25 billion in debt, a number expected to rise rapidly after Harvey. According to TheWashington Post, even with the program in place, about 80 percent of people who own homes in the area affected by the storm don’t have flood insurance.
During the same press conference where Long spoke, a reporter asked about the funding cuts. The acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security evaded the question, saying that the response team’s focus right now was strictly on helping Harvey survivors recover.
Even last year, experts were raising concerns that Houston was unprepared for the ravages of a serious hurricane.
You know what might have helped the city prepare? Mitigation funding.
This post was updated to accurately reflect a budgetary number.
Jayapura, Jubi – Pemerintah Provinsi Papua menilai sampai hari ini masalah koordinasi dan pemanfaatan sumber daya, dalam penanggulangan bencana alam masih belum terpecahkan.
Hal tersebut ditegaskan Asisten Bidang Perekonomian dan Kesejahteraan Rakyat Sekda Papua, Elia Loupatty saat workshop pengurangan risiko bencana pada lingkungan kerja, di Jayapura, Selasa (5/09/2017).
Disampaikannya pertemuan untuk bertukar pengetahuan dan pengalaman mengenai penanggulangan bencana alam, sangat penting dilakukan mengingat bencana bisa kapan saja terjadi dan di mana saja.
“Instansi dari pemerintah provinsi, kabupaten dan kota bisa duduk bersama membicarakan hal-hal teknis terkait dengan penanganan bencana alam di wilayah Papua,” ucapnya.
Menanggapi itu, Elia Loupatty meminta Badan Penanggulangan Bencana Daerah (BPBD) di wilayahnya meningkatkan koordinasi dengan stakeholder lainnya.
“Saya sarankan kepada petugas BPBD untuk melakukan latihan seolah-olah sedang terjadi bencana dan bagaimana penanganannya, petugas BPBD pun harus siap siaga 24 jam,” ucapnya.
Dia menambahkan, pemerintah provinsi Papua telah menyiapkan anggaran sebesar Rp5 miliar mendukung penanganan bencana selama 2017 untuk semua jenis bencana.
Kepala BPBD Provinsi Papua Welliam Robert Manderi mengaku, dalam penanggulangan bencana terkadang mengalami kekurangan sarana pendukung, seperti kekurangan mobil ambulans, mobil toilet, water treatment serta togar light.
“Dapat dibayangkan jika suatu daerah yang terkena bencana tak memiliki lembaga yang menanganani penanggulangan bencana. Hal inilah yang kita harap bisa menjadi perhatian pihak pemerintah kabupaten untuk bisa melaksanakan perintah UU itu,” kata Welliam. (*)
JAKARTA – Badan Nasional Penanggulangan Bencana (BNPB) mencatat lebih 148,4 juta jiwa penduduk Indonesia atau 62,4% dari total penduduk Indonesia terpapar bahaya gempa bumi dan tsunami. Pengurangan risiko bencana (PRB) gempa bumi dan tsunami mutlak dilakukan demi melindungi masyarakat Indonesia.
Karenanya, Indonesia, perlu peran aktif dalam menyebarluaskan perkembangan penanggulangan bencana ini ke masyarakat dan pemangku kebijakan, seperti pemahaman ancaman dan tata kelola risiko bencana. Maka guna merealisasikan peran serta dunia usaha dalam meningkatkan pemahaman terhadap risiko bencana, kewaspadaan, kesiapsiagaan dan untuk peningkatan kesejahteraan bangsa, BNPB bekerja sama dengan PT Reasuransi MAIPARK Indonesia.
Dengan adanya nota kesepahaman ini, ke depan, pemerintah melalui BNPB dan dunia usaha seperti yang dilakukan oleh PT Reasuransi MAIPARK Indonesia akan bisa bersinergi dalam menghadapi gempa bumi dan tsunami utamanya terkait dengan industri asuransi. Direktur Utama PT Reasuransi MAIPARK Indonesia Yasril Y. Rasyid mengatakan, melalui kerja sama ini menurutnya akan bisa digunakan sebagai landasan saling mendukung melalui kegiatan kerja sama penanggulangan bencana.
Diterangkan olehnya penanggulangan bencana terdiri dari beberapa tahap, di antaranya adalah prabencana yang meliputi kegiatan yang terdiri dari pencegahan; mitigasi dan kesiapsiagaan.Tanggap darurat meliputi kegiatan kaji cepat; pemenuhan kebutuhan dasar, pemulihan sarana dan prasarana vital. Pasca bencana meliputi kegiatan: rehabilitasi dan rekonstruksi.
Dalam pelaksanaan kegiatan kesepakan ini semua pihak, terang dia akan mengkoordinasikan pembangunan sarana dan prasarana, pertukaran data dan informasi serta peningkatan kapasitas kelembagaan. “Selain itu untuk mewujudkan kerja sama dan sinergi yang saling menguntungkan dalam rangka memberikan perlindungan melalui asuransi bencana bagi bangsa Indonesia dan tidak bertentangan dengan ketentuan peraturan perundang-undangan,” katanya dalam keterangan resminya, Rabu (30/8/2017).
Kerja sama dengan PT Reasuransi MAIPARK mendapat tangapan positif dari Deputi Pencegahan dan Kesiapsiagaan BNPB, B. Wisnu Widjaja. Sambung dia, bencana kapasitas dan kesiapsiagaan nasional dapat terwujud dengan pelibatan berbagai pihak dalam bersinergi untuk pengelolaan risiko bencana termasuk kalangan usaha termasuk di dalamnya PT Reasuransi MAIPARK Indonesia.
“Oleh karena itu, peran lembaga usaha, peran akademisi, peran media diperlukan untuk dapat memberikan solusi-solusi konkret untuk mewujudkan masyarakat yang tangguh terhadap ancaman bencana, khususnya ancaman bencana gempabumi dan tsunami,” ungkapnya.
Wisnu menambahkan bahwa kita bersama perlu memiliki paradigma bahwa bencana tidak perlu diratapi, serta mindset positif terhadap fenomena alam yang berakhir dengan dampak korban maupun kerusakan. Pemikiran positif sangat membantu dalam peningkatan kesadaran kehidupan masyarakat dalam living harmony with risk.
“Dengan memahami dan mengantisipasi kejadian-kejadian bahaya di masa mendatang, masyarakat, pemerintah dan lembaga-lembaga yang bergerak dalam bidang pembangunan dapat mengurangi risiko bencana,” tukasnya.
Kepala BNPB Willem Rampangilei menambahkan, sangat penting kerja bersama antara pemerintah, masyarakat, dan kalangan dunia usaha dalam meningkatkan pemahaman terhadap risiko bencana, kewaspadaan, kesiapsiagaan dan untuk peningkatan kesejahteraan bangsa. “Bekerjasama dengan kalangan dunia usaha juga sangat diperlukan, salah satunya adalah kerjasama antara BNPB dengan PT Reasuransi MAIPARK Indonesia pada hari ini,” katanya.
Ia juga menyampaikan pemahaman terhadap risiko bencana, kewaspadaan, kesiapsiagaan dan perubahan cara pandang dan perilaku secara nasional dalam menghadapi risiko bencana gempa bumi dan tsunami dari ancaman menjadi peluang untuk kesejahteraan bangsa perlu ditingkatkan. “Masukan berupa pemikiran kritis dan diskusi bersama diharapkan dapat menyempurnakan masterplan tsunami sebagai bentuk kristalisasi sinergitas pembangunan nasional dan pengelolaan risiko bencana,” pungkasnya
Nearly five days after first making landfall in southeast Texas, Harvey will move through northern Louisiana and Arkansas before dumping heavy rain on Memphis, CBS News chief weather producer David Parkinson reports.
Harvey was downgraded to a tropical depression after spending 102 hours as a tropical storm. It made landfall late Friday as a Category 4 hurricane; it weakened, but caused catastrophic floods when the storm barely moved from the Houston area. There have been numerous deaths so far.
We didn’t find Harvey; Harvey found us
How to help Harvey flood victims
Harvey dumped nearly 12 inches of rain in a period of six hours in the area near Beaumont, Texas, where the storm made its second rainfall. The storm’s impact is winding down there as it heads northeast. Overnight Wednesday into Thursday, it looks like the heaviest rain will fall on northern Louisiana and eastern Arkansas, where up to 6 inches of rain is expected.
Catastrophic flooding in Texas from Harvey
The heaviest rains to come will be in the Memphis area, where up to 9 inches might fall by the end of Friday. The storm will most likely dissipate over the Ohio River Valley on Saturday as the remnants hit Kentucky and Ohio. A flash flood warning is in effect for parts of Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee and Kentucky through Friday night.
Harvey’s five straight days of rain totaled close to 52 inches, a record for the continental U.S.
Kemenko Maritim mengklaim pihaknya berkerja sama dengan lembaga terkait sudah memperhitungkan potensi bencana tsunami dan gempa bumi di Kulon Progo yang menjadi lokasi pembangunan bandara baru.
tirto.id – Deputi Bidang Koordinasi Infrastruktur Kementerian Koordinator Bidang Kemaritiman menyatakan, pihaknya sudah berkoordinasi dan menjalin komunikasi dengan lembaga-lembaga terkait untuk membahas potensi bencana di bandara baru yang bernama New Yogyakarta International Airport (NYIA).
Asisten Deputi Infrastruktur Pelayaran, Perikanan dan Pariwisata Kemenko Maritim, Rahman Hidayat membantah anggapan bahwa selama ini pihaknya mengabaikan ancaman potensi gempa dan tsunami di lokasi pembangunan bandara di Kulon Progo.
“Berbicara mengenai aspek pengurangan bencana, tak benar kalau kita tidak membicarakan. Isu tsunami itu sudah menjadi perhatian, tapi memang tidak pernah dikoar-koarkan,” katanya dalam workshop “Mengungkap dan Menghitung Potensi Bahaya Gempa Bumi-Tsunami di Bandara Kulon Progo dan Metode Mitigasinya” di Yogyakarta, Selasa (29/8/2017).
Oleh karena itu, Kemenko Maritim mengundang pihak-pihak terkait seperti Badan Klimatologi dan Geofisika (BMKG), Badan Pengkajian dan Penerapan Teknologi (BPPT) dan Lembaga Ilmu Pengetahuan Indonesia (LIPI) untuk mengungkap kajian soal potensi bencana di lokasi pembangunan bandara.
Kepala Pusat Seismologi BKMG, Jaya Murjaya mengatakan, berdasarkan kajian yang sudah dilakukan BMKG, potensi gempa dan tsunami di Kulon Progo memang ada namun BMKG sudah menghitung dampaknya.
“Seperti yang kita tahu, sepanjang selatan Jawa itu memang rawan gempa, kami sudah antisipasi, berdasarkan sejarah gempa juga. Bagaimana dampaknya, semua sudah dihitung pemerintah,” kata Jaya.
Berdasarkan hasil hitungan lembaganya, jika terjadi gempa dengan magnitude 8,1 maka daerah Kulon Progo akan terdampak 5-6 MMI (skala dampak guncangan gempa) yang menurutnya, masih mampu ditahan oleh bangunan tahan gempa.
“Bangunan tahan gempa ini dalam artian bangunannya boleh rusak tapi tidak boleh roboh jadi bisa meminimalkan jumlah korban jiwa,” terang Jaya.
Sementara, untuk antisipasi potensi tsunami, menurut Jaya adalah dengan jalur hijau dan pembuatan tanggul. Pemerintah harus membuat regulasi jalur hijau yang menyatakan larangan mendirikan hunian atau bangunan di sepanjang jalur tersebut. Jalur hijau akan ditanami pohon keras seperti cemara laut dan mangrove.
Selain sabuk hijau, lanjut Jaya, bisa juga dibuat regulasi untuk melarang kegiatan atau aktivitas yang akan merusak batu karang. “Pilihan ketiga bikin tanggul, tapi ini pilihan terakhir karena biayanya mahal,” katanya.
Yang tak kalah penting dari antisipasi tsunami, menurut Jaya adalah edukasi ke warga, sehingga warga yang tinggal di pesisir pantai juga memiliki andil untuk mengantisipasi bencana tsunami.
“Pengenalan dan penyuluhan, sistem peringatan dini tsunami ke warga itu penting, sehingga warga bisa ikut andil dan jika terjadi sesuatu maka warga bisa mengambil langkah tepat, bukan justru malah ke arah pantai,” jelasnya.
Menteri Perhubungan Budi Karya Sumadi pada Jumat (25/8/2017) lalu juga sempat menyinggung soal potensi bencana tsunami di NYIA. Menurutnya, pemerintah sudah memperhitungkan potensi bencana tsunami di sana, ia juga membantah proyek itu dilakukan tanpa izin lingkungan.
“Berkaitan dengan AMDAL, sudah dilakukan. Bicara rawan bencana, kami sudah melakukan simulasi juga pembahasan yang detail berkaitan dengan tsunami. Kemungkunan terjadinya tsunami sudah dipikirkan,” kata Menhub saat menjadi pembicara seminar “Bandara Kulon Progo dan Akselerasi Pembangunan Ekonomi Yogyakarta” di Yogyakarta, Jumat (25/8/2017).
Weather and climate don’t cause disasters – vulnerability does. Perhaps counter-intuitively, this means that the widespread discussion as to whether the Hurricane Harvey disaster was caused by climate change or not becomes a dangerous distraction.
The hurricane was born off the coast of South America in mid-August and then tracked through the Gulf of Mexico, making landfall in the US on August 25. The storm surge and winds devastated coastal settlements, after which the storm stalled, dumping immense rainfall over Houston. At the time of writing, the confirmed death toll had just reached 14 and there are expectations that this will soon rise.
A disaster involving a hurricane cannot happen unless people, infrastructure and communities are vulnerable to it. People become vulnerable if they end up lacking knowledge, wisdom, capabilities, social connections, support or finances to deal with a standard environmental event such as a hurricane.
This can happen if lobbyists block tougher building codes, planning regulations, or enforcement procedures. Or if families can’t afford insurance or the cost of alternative accommodation if they evacuate. Or if limited hurricane experience induces a sense of apathy.
Often, people with disabilities rarely have their needs met when away from home. Fear of harassment or assault could stop others from entering a communal shelter. Legal or undocumented immigrants might not understand warnings and might fear the prospect of detention if they seek help.
These possible scenarios represent reasons why people in Texas might end up and remain in harm’s way. Anecdotes point to all these issues having played a part during Harvey, but only careful research in the months ahead will be able to confirm or refute them. It is nevertheless such vulnerability issues that cause the disaster. None relate to the hurricane’s physical characteristics.
Harvey gathers power.NASA/EPA
Climate change
Yes, climate change can and does influence hurricanes. The ocean’s temperature – to a certain degree – drives hurricane intensity, especially the coastal flooding level and the amount of rainfall. If the Gulf of Mexico was warmer than usual, or if some atmospheric winds were weaker than usual, then part of Harvey’s strength might be attributable to human-caused climate change. Harvey stalling above Houston might also be linked to climate change’s effects due to changing wind patterns.
But climate change does not affect people’s vulnerabilities to the hurricane. Neither the climate nor the hurricane’s characteristics made Houston an industrial centre of 2.3m people (2017 estimate), an increase of 40% since 1990. They did not force Texans to build along the coast or in floodplains without adequate measures, as occurs around the US. They did not pave over green spaces leading to reduced rainfall absorption. And they did not create the ingrained racism and desperate social inequities prevalent across the state.
In fact, storms striking Texas represented problems long before human-caused climate change appeared. One of the deadliest storms in US history occurred in 1900, when a hurricane swept ashore over Galveston, killing more than 6,000 people – more than triple Hurricane Katrina’s death toll in 2005. We often do not know details about the strength of past hurricanes or the height of their floodwaters. But we do know that fewer people lived – and much less infrastructure lay – along the storms’ paths. Yet tragedies such as Galveston still manifested, irrespective of climate change.
These historical disasters – and more recent ones such as Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005 – spurred the disaster prevention measures which saved many lives but which were not implemented fully in Texas. This left far too many people vulnerable and in danger.
‘Turn Around, Don’t Drown’
The first mandatory evacuation notice in Texas for Harvey was issued about 36 hours before the hurricane’s landfall. The ability to forecast hurricane tracks and traits, to communicate the necessary responses and to plan for masses of people moving have emerged from decades of dedicated science.
Compared to the 1900 Galveston disaster, thousands of lives were saved by scientists and government officials collaborating to serve those who were vulnerable. Many structures withstood Harvey’s 200+ km/h wind gusts with debris because engineers and lawyers wrote building codes while the government enforced the regulations. The “Turn Around, Don’t Drown” message to stay out of floodwater comes from combining research and experience on flood physics and communication science.
Strandedon the highway in Houston.Michael Wyke/EPA
But the news is not all good, especially since much of this lifesaving work is currently undergoing budget cuts.
And politics created further vulnerability. State and local leaders disagreed about evacuating Houston. Development in the city’s floodable areas had been encouraged to support the oil-fuelled economy, increasing both the population living in floodplains and the paved surfaces which augments run-off. As usual in disasters, poor and marginalised people seem to be bearing the brunt of the impacts, despite plenty of science showing the importance of social services for fostering self-help and for collectively avoiding disasters.
All this work prevents deaths during any hurricane, irrespective of climate change. Climate change might have augmented Harvey’s rainfall, storm surge, or wind. If not, Texas would still have implemented exactly the same measures to reduce the disaster’s effects. And Texas would still have had exactly the same political difficulties propping up the remaining vulnerability.
Disasters are not natural
Hurricane Harvey was an expected natural event, even if potentially modified or exacerbated by climate change. The Hurricane Harvey disaster was caused entirely by society creating and perpetuating vulnerability to these natural events.
Because vulnerability is not natural, many disaster researchers avoid the phrase “natural disaster”. Nor must hurricane disasters be our natural state of affairs, even though hurricanes have always happened. A hurricane need not become a hurricane disaster – but society let a disaster happen.
To help those affected recover quickly, Texas needed improved pre-disaster mechanisms such as more widespread insurance coverage and more widely available social services targeted at the most needy. Society must permit affordable insurance, without bankrupting the companies. Society needs regulators to ensure that payouts are reasonable and prompt while identifying claimant fraud. Society requires sufficiently skilled and resourced authorities to support everyone affected in helping themselves, no matter their background or abilities.
Many voting records in Texas are for lower taxes, for less government intervention, against tackling systemic inequities and against helping marginalised people help themselves. This choice actively creates the vulnerabilities which cause disasters. It is an ideological choice to vote for creating disaster vulnerability and voters have the right to do so. The consequences are known based on decades of disaster science.
Blaming climate change, or even just the weather, for the hurricane disaster distracts from individuals’ and society’s responsibility for where we live, how we live and how we support people who cannot help themselves. This vulnerability, not nature and not climate change, causes hurricane disasters.
When Houston floods, it turns into a locked circular labyrinth. The city, my home town, is laid out like a wagon wheel: downtown sits at the center, surrounded by three concentric circles, which are bisected by highways in every direction. The first loop, Interstate 610, is thirty-eight miles long, and corrals the Inner Loop neighborhoods. Another round of suburban neighborhoods surrounds the Loop, and is bounded by the eighty-eight-mile-long Beltway 8. Then, the truly sprawling suburbs (Spring, Sugar Land, the Woodlands) surround the Beltway. All told, the Greater Houston Area is gargantuan—at over ten thousand square miles, it’s bigger than New Jersey—and, with upward of six million residents, it’s far more populous and diverse than outsiders tend to guess. Houston is also, famously, largely unregulated: zoning laws are minimal, and the unceasing outward development has, with official permission, drastically inhibited drainage. The freeway system holds the city together, keeping a huge, dispersed population connected. But in a storm this lifeline becomes a trap. Houston is flat, and it sits just fifty feet above sea level; after the bayous overflow, the rain collects on the roads. When a flood hits, driving in Houston feels like a video game turned real and deadly. There are sudden impasses everywhere; ingenuity can’t save you; once the spokes of the wheel go under, there’s nowhere to go.
Houston is the fourth-largest city in America, and right now much of it is underwater. Things will get worse this week. Tropical Storm Harvey, which made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane, is sluggishly lingering, and will continue to pummel the flooded city. Forecasts say that Houston may get fifty inches of rain from this storm—which is the city’s average annual rainfall. Five people have died; many more will be injured. Houston’s safety-net hospital started evacuations on Sunday. The Texas Medical Center, the largest medical complex in the world, closed its submarine doors, designed, after Tropical Storm Allison, to protect the facility from flooding. Local news crews have struggled heroically to report out the disaster; one newscaster saved a truck driver’s life on air. The National Guard saved between twenty and twenty-five nursing-home residents in Dickinson after a harrowing photo went viral. My dad, who got stuck in high water on Saturday night, is one of thousands who have been rescued by Houston police. Harris County has been calling for citizens to help conduct rescues. All over the city, the roads have turned into rivers. Much of what’s visible looks like a nightmare; what makes me even sicker is imagining all the fear that we’ll never see.
People have criticized Houston residents for not evacuating. Plenty did, and with more understanding of the context, you might excuse many of those who didn’t. Evacuating a city like Houston, on these interlocked freeways—where a one-way commute might take two hours on a normal day—can very easily turn into a secondary disaster. The majority of Hurricane Rita deaths in Houston occurred in the evacuation, and two-thirds of flood fatalities happen in cars. Without financial resources, evacuation is a uniquely difficult experience, and 22.5 per cent of the population in increasingly unequal Houston lives under the poverty line. Official messages have also been uneven: Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas, advised evacuation; the mayor of Houston, Sylvester Turner—likely warding off the worst-case scenario of a hurricane hitting gridlock traffic—advised sheltering in place. (In Rockport, the mayor pro tem issued a mandatory evacuation order, telling people who refused it to write their Social Security numbers on their arms.) President Trump, who has been tweeting about Harvey as if it were a thrilling reality-show finale, and who recently rolled back an Obama-era executive order that infrastructure projects be designed to survive rising sea levels, offered a helpful “Good luck to everybody!” on Friday, before the storm.
Eight years ago, I spent all summer driving around Houston’s endless looping freeways, passing picnic-table icehouse bars and stadium churches and the nondescript streets that birthed chopped-and-screwed. I was canvassing for an environmental nonprofit that was pushing for a long-overdue citywide recycling program, and we drove for hours to reach our neighborhood targets. The job was hard: we looked like scammers, and we were proselytizing about environmental responsibility in a city that at the time recycled less than three per cent of its own waste. But I liked the effort of trying to understand and appeal to a dizzying variety of strangers. I knocked on the doors of McMansions and decrepit bungalows, talked to immigrants and Texas-born white people, pitched liberals and conservatives and the politically averse. Houston, which is by one measure the most diverse city in America, took shape in my imagination as an enormous canvas of unpredictable, heterogeneous people who were connected, somehow, by a confusing combination of independence and generosity. As a state, Texas is fiercely individualistic—the land of bootstraps and no income tax and privatized solutions for all. Houstonians absorb this; they are loyal and responsible in a way that rarely extends across the city, which is, again, so big as to feel unfathomable—and those freeways, effectively, are our only public space.
And yet, this week I suspect we’ll mostly see another side of Houston: its scrappy sense of humor, and its extraordinary and very Texan largesse. Houston responds to disaster with fortitude: the city absorbed two hundred thousand Vietnamese refugees in the nineteen-seventies, and it currently resettles twenty-five of every thousand refugees that the United Nations resettles anywhere—that’s more than any other city in America, and more than most countries. After Hurricane Katrina, Houston took in a quarter of a million evacuees, and, aided by Mayor Bill White’s multimillion-dollar resettlement program, as many as forty thousand people stayed. Over the weekend, Houston teen-agers were out in the streets rescuing people via kayak. As Rebecca Solnit argues in her 2009 book, “A Paradise Built in Hell,” disasters create a window into social desire and potential. We’re normally encouraged to think of private life as precious and public life as a nuisance, she writes, but “disasters, in returning their sufferers to public and collective life, undo some of this privatization, which is a slower, subtler disaster all its own.” Disasters remind us that ambitious, difficult things are not just possible but necessary; in Houston, Harvey is already showing how an individualistic work ethic and a spirit of collective generosity can and have to coexist.
JAKARTA, KompasProperti – Cuaca di beberapa tempat saat ini kurang bersahabat. Sebut saja Pantai Teluk Texas dan Louisiana yang dilanda Badai Harvey.
Sementara di Jakarta dan sekitarnya juga dalam beberapa hari terakhir menghadapi hembusan angin kencang.
Deru angin ini diprediksi Badan Meteorologi, Klimatologi dan Geofisika (BMKG) memiliki kepecapatan setara 40-60 kilometer per jam.
BMKG bahkan juga mengimbau masyarakat berhati-hati karena tidak menutup kemungkinan papan reklame, baliho maupun pohon rindang roboh.
Datangnya bencana memang tidak dapat ditebak. Di bawah ini ada beberapa tip dan tindakan pencegahan yang dapat Anda lakukan untuk tetap aman dan melindungi rumah Anda selama bencana alam.
1. Terus perbarui informasi
Badai dapat meningkat atau turun intensitasnya, jadi sebaiknya Anda terus melacak informasi ini.
Caranya bisa dengan mengikuti berita di media massa seperti koran, radio atau TV. Selain itu, Anda juga bisa memantau informasi dari BMKG.
Kemudian, jangan lupa periksa peringatan dari pemerintah kota atau sekitar Anda untuk pemberitahuan evakuasi.
Meski demikian, jangan mudah menerima mentah-mentah informasi di media sosial terutama dari orang yang tidak berwenang menyampaikan berita.
Akibat abrasi hingga rumah-rumah di Desa Pantai Sederhana, Kecamatan Muara Gembong, Kabupaten Bekasi,semakin dekat dengan lautan.
Akibat abrasi hingga rumah-rumah di Desa Pantai Sederhana, Kecamatan Muara Gembong, Kabupaten Bekasi,semakin dekat dengan lautan.(KOMPAS.COM/Anggita Muslimah)
2. Siapkan bagian luar rumah Anda
Bagi Anda yang memiliki ruang terbuka, sebaiknya pertimbangkan untuk memindahkan perabot outdoor seperti, tong sampah, pemanggang, mainan, pot tanaman dan sejenisnya jika memungkinkan.
Periksa pohon terdekat apakah ada cabang yang mati atau longgar yang bisa jatuh saat terkena angin.
Periksa juga talang atau saluran dan pastikan tetap bersih, karena kotoran dapat menyumbat dan menyebabkan masalah drainase.
Pada akhirnya, kemungkinan banjir akan meningkat saat terjadi hujan deras.
Kemudian pastikan atap Anda telah disegel dengan kuat untuk menghindari kemungkinan atap terbawa angin kencang.
3. Perhatikan jendela dan pintu
Jika pintu Anda memiliki banyak mekanisme penguncian, gunakan semuanya untuk mencegah agar tidak terbang terbuka.
Sedangkan untuk jendela, pastikan juga telah terkunci.
Perlu diketahui, tempat paling aman untuk berada dalam cuaca buruk adalah di dalam atau jauh dari jendela, cahaya matahari dan pintu kaca.
Sebuah ruangan interior dengan lemari atau kamar mandi pada tingkat yang lebih rendah menjadi pilihan terbaik.
Mobil yang terendam di basement Tamani Kafe, Jalan Kemang Raya, Jakarta Selatan, Minggu (28/8/2016).
Mobil yang terendam di basement Tamani Kafe, Jalan Kemang Raya, Jakarta Selatan, Minggu (28/8/2016).(KOMPAS.com/Nibras Nada Nailufar)
4. Amankan mobil
Jika memiliki mobil, pastikan Anda memiliki tangki bensin penuh, wipernya baru, tekanan bannya bagus, dan jendelanya tertutup rapat.
Kemudian, persiapkan juga sebuah tas darurat yang berisi pengisi daya telepon, peta, dan dokumen asuransi.
Jika Anda tidak memiliki garasi dan memarkirkan mobil di jalan, pastikan tidak diparkir di bawah pepohonan atau di area tertentu yang rawan banjir.
5. Jika banjir akan terjadi, pertimbangkan tindakan ini
Beberapa hal bisa disiapkan sebelum banjir, asal Anda jeli melihat tanda-tandanya.
Jika air mulai naik, hal pertama yang harus Anda lakukan adalah memindahkan sebanyak mungkin barang, termasuk barang elektronik dan dokumen penting ke lantai yang lebih tinggi.
Paling tidak, bawa barang-barang tersebut dari lantai dasar. Kemudian, matikan listrik ke daerah yang terkena dampak dari panel pemutus.
6. Jangan lupakan hewan peliharaan
Pastikan semua hewan peliharaan berada di dalam rumah selama cuaca buruk. Jika Anda harus mengungsi, sebaiknya Anda tahu hotel mana yang ramah hewan peliharaan.
Sebagian besar tempat penampungan bencana Palang Merah tidak bisa menampung hewan peliharaan, jadi lihat apakah ada teman atau keluarga di daerah yang tidak terkena dampak yang dapat membawa mereka.
Humanitarian Dispatches merupakan suatu wadah yang disediakan oleh United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs untuk berbagai koleksi cerita, foto, blog tentang kegawatdaruratan di dunia. Cerita dibalik suatu peristiwa yang harus menjadi perhatian dunia. Wadah ini memberikan informasi spesifik terkait peristiwa konflik yang terjadi. beberapa diantaranya yaitu menghilangkan 5 mitos tentang kekerasan seksual dalam keadaan darurat. Terdapat miskonsepsi tentang kekerasan berbasis gender yang berujung pada stigmatisasi survivor. 5 hal terkait dengan hal tersebut dipaparkan pada cerita tersebut. Cerita lainnya berjudul “Saya melihat kota Saya meninggal: Penderitaan Warga sipil di kota”. Cerita ini memberikan pembaca gambaran tentang kondisi yang terjadi di wilayah Irak, Siria dan Yaman pada konflik. Langit-langit rumah yang hancur, dinding-dinding rumah yang dihiasi oleh pecahan peluru serta luka yang diakibatkan oleh peluru menjadi pemandangan yang akrab di wilayah tersebut. Informasi selengkapnya Klik Disini
Humanitarian Dispatches merupakan suatu wadah yang disediakan oleh United Nations Office for the