Smong: How an Oral History Saved Thousands on Indonesia's Simeulue Island during the December 2004 and March 2005 Tsunamis

Abstract

The tsunamis on 26 December 2004 and 28 March 2005 killed only 7 people on Simeulue Island in Indonesia's Aceh province. At Langi, on the north end of Simeulue, which is 40 km south of the December earthquake's epicenter, maximum wave heights exceeded 10 m less than 10 minutes after the shaking ceased. In the more populous south, wave heights averaged 3 m and caused significant structural damage, destroying entire villages. Oral histories recount a massive 1907 tsunami and advise running to the hills after “significant” shaking (∼1 minute). All the interviewed Simeulue survivors knew of this event and of the necessary action. However, Jantang, on the Aceh mainland, suffered far more casualties. Simeulue's oral history provided an extraordinarily powerful mitigation tool that saved countless lives where even a high-tech warning system with a 15-minute response time would have been of no help.

Integration of indigenous knowledge and disaster risk reduction: A case study from Baie Martelli, Pentecost Island, Vanuatu

“…Yet there are innumerable examples of the utility of such stories in enabling local people to apprehend, avoid, or escape recurrent hazard, ranging from the about 7000-year old Klamath tradition about the danger of Mt. Mazama in the western USA (Barber and Barber 2004) to the smong tradition of people on Simeulue Island in Indonesia that enabled them to escape the impact of the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami (McAdoo et al 2006).…”

“…It is being increasingly acknowledged that indigenous knowledge can make important contributions to both the understanding and the management of environmental change in developing countries (Agrawal 1995;Mercer et al 2007;Shaw, Sharma, and Takeuchi 2009). It has become clear that there are extant indigenous traditions that have elicited appropriate responses from communities confronted by disaster in ways that may be more effective than nonindigenous, science-based warning systems (McAdoo et al 2006;McAdoo, Moore, and Baumwoll 2009). Conversely, it is also apparent that many peripheral (distant from urban) communities in developing countries today lack such traditions and consequently have a need to interpret precursors of disaster to enable appropriate responses (Gregg et al 2006;Gaillard et al 2008).…”

Capacities in Facing Natural Hazards: A Small Island Perspective

“…Gaillard (2007) explains how an indigenous community on Niuafo'ou in Tonga and the Aeta Negrito communities of the Philippines have coped with volcanic eruptions, and how the Tikopia in the Solomon archipelago have dealt with typhoons and famine through changes in their traditional ways of life. Experiences passed down through generations also strengthen the local capacities of Simeulue islanders who have faced many hazards, including the tsunami in Aceh on 26 December 2004 as described by Gaillard et al (2008) and McAdoo et al (2006). The potential for integrating local knowledge with more well-documented scientific knowledge has also been examined by several scholars Mercer et al 2009).…”

Learning from the history of disaster vulnerability and resilience research and practice for climate change

“…Or has coastal vulnerability built up much faster than the century scale, so that the tsunamis were 10-or 30-year events irrespective of the earthquake and tsunami's geological return periods? In places where people were aware of the post-earthquake tsunami threat and reacted appropriately saving hundreds of lives, such as on the island of Simeulue, Indonesia (Gaillard et al 2008;McAdoo et al 2006), how long could such a resilience process last?…”