Indonesia is a disaster-prone country like volcanic eruption, earthquakes, and tsunami. On the other hand, a lot of citizens live in natural hazard hotspots. “In fact, the hotspot are fertile areas and have springs as well as wonderful scenery,” conveyed Dr. Surono, Head of Volcanology and Geological Disaster Mitigation Center (PVMBG), in a seminar “Caring the World” on Thursday (11/8) at Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta (UMY). The seminar was one of the agendas of Disaster Management Summer School (DMSS) organized by Faculty of Engineering of UMY.

Recognizing the circumstance of the citizens, sustainable education is necessary. For one reason, disasters are inevitable so that the crux is on how disaster management and mitigation are carried out.

The first aspect of mitigation strategies is dealing with human rescue. “Regarding disasters, the foremost subject of mitigation strategies is the humans instead of volcanic eruption or other disasters. The significance is educating the people about human rescue,” asserted Dr. Surono, well-known as Mbah Rono.

He also affirmed that an erroneous strategy is that a lot of people donate to disaster areas, yet the victims have passed away due to lack of knowledge of human rescue.

Indonesian government has deliberated prone-disaster areas in Indonesia. Volcanology and Geological Disaster Mitigation Center supported by Indonesian government conducted research of prone-disaster areas. The research aimed at coining a map of prone-disaster areas, and it will later be socialized to the people. “For volcanic eruption and landslide, early warning system can be undertaken since the disasters can be detected earlier so that the rescue can be carried out,” informed Dr. Surono, who was also an expert staff of Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources for Spatial Planning and the Environment.

Noticing volcanic eruption of Mt. Raung in East Java recently, it has put the people in danger and several flights were cancelled. Mbah Rono elucidated that volcanic ashes are danger as plane machines may not work. Thus, it necessitated that flights were delayed or cancelled.

Meteorology, Climatoligy, and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) will report wind direction moving volcanic ashes of Mt. Raung, and will coordinate to flight agencies and Ministry of Transportation so that it can be decided whether the flights should close down or can be continued,” he informed. He also inserted that Indonesia cooperated with Himawari satellite of Japan to identity volcanic ash movement.