User:Strongden/OLES2129/sandbox

Alor an island located Kepulauan Alor in Indonesia with the area of 2800 km2, as the largest island of Alor archipelago with near 16,800 residents. Happening in 2004-11-11 21:26:41 UTC, Alor earthquake is scaled of 7.5, on the Richter scale, 7.5 mwc, on Alor; depth uncertainty about 10.0 km with a number of stations 301. The epicenter of the earthquake is 1600 km east of the capital of Jakarta. Hundreds of homes and infrastructures been damaged with near 30 death and thousands of casualties. Geological hazards and disaster happened frequently (over thousands of earthquake and tsunami, natural landslide and flooding) in this eastern Indonesian island, as the middle part of the India region and Oceania plate; this was the largest earthquake happened in 2004 in Indonesia region which causes wide ranges of social attention.

Tectonics


According to the study of USGS, Kepulauan Alor is of volcanic origin and has rugged terrain. The earthquake happened near the convergent boundary between the Banda Sea microplate to the north and the Timor microplate to the south.

According to USGS

“The November 11, 2004, M 7.5 earthquake near Kepulauan Alor, Indonesia, occurred as the result of shallow thrust faulting on or near the convergent boundary between the Banda Sea microplate to the north and the Timor microplate to the south. Focal mechanism solutions indicate that rupture occurred on either a steep, near-vertical reverse fault or on a shallow, southward-dipping thrust fault. The two microplates are sandwiched along with other microplates between the larger Sunda, Philippine Sea, Australia, and Pacific plates. The location, depth, and focal mechanism solutions of the November 11th earthquake are consistent with it having occurred on the thrust interface between these two local microplates. A similar earthquake occurred only 20 km to the west in July 1991, an M 6.9 earthquake that resulted in 23 fatalities and 181 injuries.”.

Alor island located at this region of where continental collision between plates happened, causing very frequent geological disasters to happen. Earthquakes on November 11, 2004, are mapped with 80x40 km (length x width).

Timeline of the shock
There are over 30 noticeable aftershocks between 11 May to 13 May, scaling from m4.2 to m7.5. The shocks happening every hour.



Tsunami caused by the earthquake
From the official website of the United States National Tsunami Warning Center, NOAA/NWS, according to the research of the Indonesian Meteorological and Geophysical Agency (BMG), there’s a Tsunami followed by the Alor earthquake Nov 2004 closing to Alor island. And the flooding of the coastline is about 50 meters away.

And there’s a series of subsequent effect on the local area:

Kalabahi city was severely damaged by the Tsunami combined with continuous aftershocks of the earthquake. Located in the valley between hills, Bukapiting village was destroyed.Also, the landslide caused by the earthquake breaks the road apart that connected Kalabahi and Maritaing villages.

Also, Maritaing beach was attacted by the tsunami, which is a beautiful natural landscape of Indonesia, 98 kilometer north of Kalabahi village in Alor Timur. In Dali, there’s a floating hotel in the natural harbor was pushed to the shore because the quake caused water to recede.

Near 649 houses were damaged and 205 of them were severely damaged or destroyed. There was a destruction of a government infrastructure Three schools and eight worships collapsed. Electricity grid of Alor island was shut down temporarily. Local activities are mostly affected and discontinued.

Moreover, normal air planes cannot land, because of the destruction of the local airport in Kalabahi city. Lots of cracks in the runways for taking off or landing.

=== Historical Earthquake and Tsunami happened in nearby region since 2000 ===

About 2000, on May 4, earthquake scaled of 7.5 on the Richter scale, 7.5 mwc, at shakes Sulawesi Province, which caused over 35 death. On June 4, earthquake scaled of 7.9 on the Richter scale, 7.9 mwc, at Bengkulu Province, which caused over 117 death.

On 2004, on Feb 6, earthquake scaled of 6.9 on the Richter scale, 6.9 mwc, at Papua. The aftershocks caused over 34 death. Also, on Nov 26, earthquake scaled of 6.4 on the Richter scale, 7.9 mwc, at West Papua, which caused over 30 death. At the end of the year, Dec 26, Tsunami happened at sea bed of Sumatra island, which is caused by earthquake magnitude of 9; that affected over 20 nearby countries and took over 120,000 lifes.

On 2005, on Mar 28, earthquake scaled of 8.7 on the Richter scale, 8.7 mwc, Nias and Simeulue islands away from the Sumatra west shore, which caused over 900 death.

Moreover, on May 27, 2006, earthquake scaled of 6.2 on the Richter scale, 6.2 mwc, central city of Yogyakarta, which caused over 5,000 death.

Damage and casualties
According to OCHA Situation Report No. 1 From the OCHA Situation report No.1, there are 23 deaths caused by the earthquake with 116 severely wounded out of the 118 casualties. For the destruction of houses, 3,883 houses have been impacted by the disaster with 3,733 been severely destroyed; 781 of them totally collapsed during the shocks.

According to ABC NEWS ONLINE 2004//11/14

Many roads on Alor island have been badly damaged From the report of the ABC News Online, there are 19 people passed away caused by the disaster, which 36 people severely injured out of 76 slight casualties. Also, the Earthquake has wide spread impact over the houses of local area: 93 are totally destroyed while 791 of them are severely damaged out of over thousands of houses. The earthquake lasts over half of a month, with large and wide spread destruction of infrastructures over thousands of houses, schools, offices and worships. From the report of IFC, earthquake cut off the connection between outside and the Alor island as electricity gird and telecommunication infrastructure are breakdown heavily; also, at very initial phase of the earthquake, the external rescue force can’t reach the hazard area as disconnection of communication and bad weather condition, storm and tsunami came after; moreover, even the local hospitals mostly remained undamaged, the current capacity can’t cope with a large number of causalities while they still need to be a temporary shelter for people.

Social reactions
At the first phase of Alor earthquake November 2004, 4,500 affected households received emergency shelter and non-perishable material; after, the same number of households are assigned with the essential building material and basic tools

According to the red cross document, the residual balance of CHF 420,054 (66% of the total emergency appeal income), was assigned to the Tsunami Emergency and Recovery Program 2005 - 2010 for Indonesia. The detailed composition of the funds' balance is in the following:

Donor Funds (CHF)

And according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs:

“cash assistance allocated by the central government has rounded about USD 172,000.”

International Help
international assistance has been provided by the governments below International organizations involved are:

IFRC, MSF-B, WVI, CRS, CWS, Oxfam GB, and GTZ-Siskes.

Reconstruction of the earthquake
The Alor island had a non-ideal post-disaster reconstruction after the great earthquake happened in Nov 2004; this is because, as it was mentioned, Alor island locates on the faulting area between the region where tectonic collisions happened frequently. Therefore, there are continuously natural disasters and hazards happened in this area, causing significant obstacles for the reconstruction team to do the recovery job. However, the infrastructure is reinforced by anti-seismic design with the shock-resistant technology; mostly the houses and the schools. They are able to resist 8, on the Richter scale, mostly.

Memorial
Because that disaster has rooted impressive and unforgettable memories to the local people, the date of 10 Dec of every year becomes the memorial date of that disaster. Most of the local schools will memories the death in ways of gathering on the ground, singing songs to the national flag to show their memorial affection. The local government and media will also memorize that earthquake on TV channels and official websites by documentary films and videos. Also, on official social media of the local government, there’s post information about the memorial message.

The total amount of help is valued by USD 420,054

Influence of Earthquake to local economy
The residents in Alor island still keep the way of substance agriculture with purely originated farm implements. Also, the infrastructure is weakly developed with the reason of insufficient government fund and regular natural disasters: earthquake, tsunamis, flood, naturally caused crop failure, etc. One another pillar industry on the island is the fishing industry, which are perennially interfered or destructed by the flood and tsunamis. In fact, the natural resources in the island is highly abundant; Alor island are obtaining large amount of natural gas, ipsum, kaolin, petroleum, tin, gold and various diamonds. However, due to the reason of perennial disasters, the cost-effectiveness of exploiting local natural resources is always higher than the value of the mines and gases, as the oil and mine filed are very fragile to earthquake and tsunami. Besides, Alor island is deemed as one of the best diving destinations in the world, making local tourism one of the major income source of Alor inhabitants, with mainly diving and snorkeling; while the natural disaster also keeps people away from the land. In the research, the earthquake normally causes destructions of many infrastructures, such as hospitals, schools and work office, with the resulted injuries of a large amount of local people. Thereafter, there are wide ranges of types of secondary effect such as economic break down, diseases spread.

During years reconstructive and development of local tourism, the houses and structure has deduced the effect of earthquake to the minimal level that it can bring to the local life. Also, after several severe earthquake, the local life is largely improved by the tourism, with the island’s high accessibility, beaches, and shopping. Even this region is still remote, there are several different airlines to Alor via Kupang in Timor. And beaches in alor island remain undamaged during long period of geo destruction. Moreover, local aboriginal culture remained well; local people made livings on traditional handcraft as souvenirs to tourist.