Looking For Blessings Amid The Rubble

By Tim Baker

Surf Charter community pull together in the wake of the Sumatran earthquake

Some of the drama of the Sumatran earthquake unfolded in real time on social networking sites like Facebook, as surf charter operators tracked down loved ones, staff, boats and clientele.

In the hours and days after the quake, calls went out for sightings of missing friends, and offers of help poured in from around the world.

Amidst the horror and suffering, there was a rare bright spot when owner of the popular Batang Arau hotel, Christina Fowler, was able to put out the call that they had internet working and a generator operating.

“We have internet - try to bring some non mixed bensin for the generator and you are welcome to use it. its on most of the day. Powers the fridges -- WE HAVE COLD BEER !!!!” she posted on Facebook.

The Batang Arau, badly damaged in the quake, had been a popular meeting place for the surf charter industry and ex-pat community in Padang. So Christina and her charter skipper husband Chris “Scuzz” Scurrah decided to set up a makeshift bar in their home nearby, to try and provide a focal point for the recovery effort.

“We are hanging in there... We have food from the office kitchen we are cooking up -- so everyone is eating, and of course, the cold beer,” she says.

Christina and Scuzz were on the frontline of the relief effort after the Boxing Day tsunami in 2004, loading up their boats with supplies and heading out to help remote communities. Now they find themselves providing an informal relief and communication centre in their home - distributing meals and providing internet.

Scuzz posted a shockingly vivid account of the quake on-line:
“Was a pretty radical quake, started slow and long interval, enough in most places to get up and out from under what you were in and start to run. Then it got stronger and LOUD and was really rolling, opening up the ground, throwing power lines down, shaking trees like they were in a cyclone. Big buildings were sort of semi-exploding like bombs were in them and catching on fire. Then it slowed and you heard screaming and crying, saw shock, saw people with legs under walls, blood, panic. Picked up a kid with his knee hanging out of his leg. He was in shock. His dad grabbed him and I later found out he bled out in the hospital, no blood.”

Despite losing almost everything, Christina says they are acutely aware of how lucky they are. “The three story wall next door to our house is a bit of a worry. The back of the building’s almost totally gone so we are holding our breath that when it falls, it goes backwards, not sideways onto our house,” she says. “We feel really fortunate we are only digging for stuff... Some are trying to find family and friends. Every time another friend walks through our front gate I get goose bumps.”

But the bad news might not be over for Padang. Seismologists say the recent quake was not the “big one” they claim is inevitable for the ravaged city.

"Padang has bad geology. It sits 40 kilometres above the most earthquake-prone stretch of the interface between the Indo-Australian and Eurasian plates,"  says John McCloskey, a seismologist at the Environmental Sciences Research Institute at the University of Ulster in Coleraine, Northern Ireland. "Another earthquake is on its way, and all it will take to trigger it is the pressure of a handshake."

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