Extreme Weather

            I apologize for not posting anything for sometime.  I have been busy trying to take care of a bunch of little things that pop up from time to time.  In addition, we have our friends, Mark, Mary and Karen living in Jakarta now.  Mary came to work at USAID.  So we have been helping them get settled, though they probably know a lot  more about Jakarta and Indonesia than we could possibly teach or show them since Mark and Mary had previously lived in Indonesia for over seven (?) years.  Indeed, they find my pathetic struggle to express myself in bahasa Indonesia quite amusing, and they love to laugh and joke with the Indonesians as I attempt to express myself like a three year old.

            In any event, my bahasa teacher is late in arriving today, so I thought I would take the time to enter a quick post.  Irene suggest this morning I should write about the weather, if I can't think of anything else to write about.  That may have been a joke, but if so, it was a typical Dutch dry humor, and Indonesia is anything but dry right now.

            With the horrific earthquake in Japan recently, we have been more focused this past week on the Southeast Asian tropical weather.  We are starting to come out of the rainy season so we actually see some blue skies during part of the day (as opposed to a white cloud covered day), and the days are getting warmer (averaging mid to upper 80s).  But Jakarta weather is never particularly predictable or stable.  One minute it can be beautiful and sunny, the next dark and stormy.  I do not know why that is, or rather how this functions, but weather can be very localized here.  In other words, you can have a huge rainstorm in one area of the city, dumping several inches of rain in the course of twenty or thirty minutes, and another part of the city will remain completely sunny and dry.

            Last Tuesday I was driving down to pick up Miles from school, when we drove into a huge rainstorm.  The street quickly filled up with an average of six inches of standing (or flowing water), and up to a foot in various dips and gullies.  Lucky for you I had my new phone which also has a camera.  Unlucky for you, I still shake like a leaf because of my tremor, so not all of these shots are fuzzy due exclusively to the atmospheric conditions.  As cars drove through the street they would push a wall of water creating waves about six inches high that would break over the sidewalk and wash into the stores along the road.  A couple of motorcycles stalled out in the middle of the street because of the water.  But after twenty minutes the rain stopped and the water all drained into the open  storm sewers along the road and everyone proceeded as though it were no big deal.  When we got to Miles’ school, about 8 kilometers away, it was evident that it did not rain except for a few sprinkles in that area of town.  Indeed, it did not rain at all to the north near the Embassy, about 12 kilometers from our house.

   

 

            Last Wednesday however the area near the embassy and the area up to about three kilometers from our house, was hit hard by a huge windstorm which blew down big old trees about two feet in diameter.  It blew down a couple of large billboard sized signs in downtown Jakarta.  It took out electrical wires, and it blew the roof off a hotel rooftop bar.  There was some wind further south where we live and further still where Miles goes to school, but nothing of significance.  However, as a result of the wind, it took Irene two hours to travel the 12 or 15 kilometers to our home from the Embassy.  It was a hellish commute, but as Irene commented, it could have been worse.  At least she was not the Embassy driver who after dropping off all the embassy workers in this neighborhood  had to turn around and drive back downtown to drop off the van, and then probably drive another dozen or so kilometers to her home.

            As I said, I do not know why we have such localized weather, but we have very intense weather in a very short span of time in a very small localized area.  As a result, it is difficult to maintain certain infrastructures in this City.  Streets that are subject to this type of flooding are also subject to being washed away.  Indeed I remember driving along one particularly bumpy road in the middle of the city and complaining to my traveling companion about the city streets, and she replied that this particular street had been repaved only six months ago, but that a series of heavy rains had washed it out.  But rains and winds are not the only thing that Indonesians need to worry about.  When we were traveling through Yogyakarta in January, we got stuck in a horrible traffic jam outside the city.  I could not understand why traffic had ground to a halt, particularly since traffic had not been that heavy and the weather was nice.  However, after about a half hour of inching along, I could see the problem and our driver explained the problem.  The small town/village we were driving through evidently was battered the night before by a cold lava flow. 

            As you can see from these pictures the area was devastated.  Our driver explained to us that this was lava that had erupted from the mountain the previous night.  

                    Our driver kept on saying that this was lava that had come from the mountain the night before.  Now, I could not understand what he meant when he said that this was lava from the mountain, because there was no volcanic eruption from any active volcano in the region the night before.  If there had been, we would have known it, and if there had and it had brought this hot volcanic lava, there would have been a lot more destruction.  However, what I think we were seeing was the old volcanic ash, mud and rock that had washed down from Mt. Merapi, which had been active a few months before.  I think this volcanic mud had collected up the mountain and then broke loose in the preceding night's heavy rain storm and surged down with the force of a ruptured dam.  You can see in the photographs the huge boulders carried down by this cold mud flow.  It came down with such force that it essentially re-directed the pre-existing streams and rivers and plowed down jungled forests.  It covered the road in a strip about 100-150 meters wide, which I guess was the width of the river it created.  When the heavy equipment cleared the road, it piled the mud and rocks along the side of the road about 12-15 feet high.   This is the damage that a not extraordinary rain can cause.

          As you know, Indonesia sits on the fault lines of several different tectonic plates within what is known as the Ring of Fire, making it highly susceptible to volcanos and earthquakes.  Indonesia is currently in the process of designing and building its first nuclear power plants.  With the recent Japanese catastrophe, there has been new debate about the reasonableness of this plan.  Unfortunately, the head of Indonesia's nuclear regulatory commission is a die hard nuclear power advocate and is determined to press forward with the plan.  Note:  one planned plant is to be built (possibly) at the base of an active volcano.  Although Indonesia has an internationally known reputation for construction graft and cutting corners, the agency head claims that Indonesia can build a reactor to withstand an earthquake, tsunami or volcano.  He claims that Indonesia can construct better and stronger nuclear power plants than the Japanese and that Indonesians need not worry.  He wants to proceed.  All I can say is I hope it rains on his parade.  But we will be long gone before any power plant gets operational in this country.

           In the immediate future for us, we will be traveling.  Next week we go to the States for two and a half weeks to visit friends and family.  No more postings until April.