City experiments with high-rise evacuation centers

Tsunamis are one of nature’s most devastating forces. As seen in Japan last March, and in 2004 in Southeast Asia, a giant tsunami can be even more catastrophic than the earthquakes that trigger them.

In Indonesia, where over 180,000 lives were lost in the 2004 disaster out of the 230,000 deaths across the region, local authorities have been forced to look at the limitations of their emergency procedures.

Despite evacuation roads and emergency plans, there was not enough time for thousands of people to outrun the giant wave or run to the safety of higher ground.

Officials in the West Sumatra city of Padang think they may have a unique solution: building high-rise evacuation centers.

These buildings will have more room than regular evacuation roads. Current evacuation roads not only lack room, but are hard to get to, Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, head of public relations at the National Agency for Disaster Management in Jakarta, told United Nation’s humanitarian news agency IRIN.

In the Padang area, residents have 25 minutes or less to escape a tsunami wave, but with Indonesia’s island landscape, surrounded by rivers and mountains, and the small size of the region, those minutes are not enough.

Dedi Henidal, director of Padang’s Natural Disaster Mitigation Board, says the city plans to build nearly 100 tall buildings, each with room for 3,000 to 6,000 people, according to IRIN.

That means, 300,000 to 600,000 people will be safe, if the plan works. Fourteen such structures have been built already in the last year. Padang has a population of approximately 833,000.

For Nugroho, this is essential planning because it’s not a question of “if” another tsunami will come to Indonesia, but “when.” He estimates there would be 400,000 deaths if a tsunami were to occur today.

Indonesia is in the Ring of Fire, where earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are common.

Fighting Off Corruption

Since tsunamis are triggered by earthquakes, the evacuation buildings must be earthquake-resistant, which requires exacting building techniques.

The buildings were designed with civil engineers from the University of Kyoto and Indonesian geophysicists and seismologists, according to Henidal. He said his agency is testing if the buildings can withstand earthquakes higher than magnitude nine.

But to ensure high enough quality in the work, the issue of corruption will need to be resolved.

“Building safety costs money. Sometimes, unscrupulous developers try to cut corners to save money,” says Sander Pasterkamp, assistant professor of Structural Design at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands.

He gives the example of the shoddily constructed schools—nicknamed tofu buildings—that collapsed during the Sichuan earthquake in 2008. “This may have been the reason behind [the collapse].”

“[The cost of these buildings] is very much dependent on the choice of building material and structural type,” explains Dr. Frederick Krimgold, the director of the Disaster Risk Reduction Program at Virginia Tech. But, he says, careful decision-making can help drop that cost.

“The Indonesian government should give a kind of incentive or ‘reward’ to structural design consultants and contractors,” suggests Sugeng Wijanto, a member of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute from Indonesia. He says the reward could be national recognition or tax deduction.

Pasterkamp agrees, “With big prestigious projects, quality is more likely assured.”

The buildings will not only serve as evacuation zones, they will also have other uses, serving as schools or offices.

Nugroho says that the buildings should become “long-term life-saving centers” that store food, medicine, and tents.

Wijanto says the earthquake-resistant buildings will not only have great economic and aesthetic value, but he hopes they will be a “newly introduced strategy, not only for Indonesia, but also for other countries.”