Merapi, a Bless or a Disaster?
This afternoon, I went out to Merapi just 30 mins after the explosion. Two days after ash-fall upon Yogyakarta, south of Merapi. 32 people died before the day before the ash reached Yogyakarta. They died because of the earlier pyroclastic flow that destroyed the village, including Mbah Maridjan, the “Gatekeeper of Merapi”.
I started to think, why it took so many casualties upon the people there. One day before the explosion, the warning level had been raised to the maximum level where no one should be in radius of the pyroclastic flow. People gathered in refugee camps, around 20 kilos from Yogyakarta, but still there are people who stay in the village, although it is in the radius of the pyroclastic flow.
A bad management of disaster and poor knowledge of the people about the danger made the casualties worse. Again, the culture plays the role here. Mbah Maridjan didn’t want to leave from his house because of his experience, he didn’t get hurt from the previous explosion. Unfortunatelly, more than 80 years of experience is nothing compared to the age of the mount itself…
This stratovolcano that buried previous human civilizations under its ashes. Buddhist Temple of Borobudur, Hindu Temple of Prambanan and other yet unknown sites had been buried by the mount’s ashes. How small we are compared to this volcan. Yet we have been granted science by the Almighty to guide us enduring the mechanism the Almighty created, but the problem is, why the casualties are unnecessary? We could have saved those people.
Again, the question is our task to answer and to prevent from happening again.
Still, there is a bless behind the disaster… if we endure it…
I hope we learn from the past 
