Word: pariaman
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...That inequality struck me as I surveyed the wreckage of Pariaman, where nearly every building had been twisted into a carcass of impossible angles. Unlike New Orleans or other Western locales ravaged by nature, Pariaman will quickly fade from the vocabulary of global disaster. Yet the tales there are no less tragic...
...shadow of a volcano, under a nightfall that cannot hide the rising stench of death, Pariaman official Yuen Karnova recounts his district's toll from the earthquake that struck the Indonesian island of Sumatra on Sept. 30: at least 400 people believed dead, just some of what will probably be thousands of casualties from the quake; more than 10,000 buildings collapsed or condemned; a dozen or so villages wiped off the map by landslides. Pariaman, Karnova notes, is hardly a stranger to calamity. "Every natural disaster you can think of, it has happened here," he tells me. "Landslides, floods...
...Pariaman's remote hamlet of Pulau Koto, which had been interred by a 30-ft.-high (10 m) landslide, I met Amin Dullah, a 40-year-old fishmonger, who crouched under a tarp with his 5-year-old daughter. When the tremor struck, Dullah fled his house with his 2-year-old son Fajar. But he was soon inundated by two waves of earth and lost his grip on the boy. Two days later, Fajar's body was found. Only six of Dullah's 31 neighbors survived. Marooned in such an isolated place, they had no idea that tragedy extended...
...Saturday, the dogs were heading to Pariaman, a remote area close to the epicenter of the 7.6 magnitude tremor, joining search- and-rescue squads from South Korea, Singapore, Japan and the United Arab Emirates. The day before, Pariaman regency's secretary Yuen Karnova received a call late at night informing him that foreign experts had arrived, and he rejoiced, "God bless, help is coming." The chance of finding survivors in the landslides triggered by the quake in that region will be very slim. Still, the Swiss team prepares the dogs for the journey to Pariaman by dunking the dogs...
...emergency headquarters in Pariaman, regency secretary Yuen Karnova says that at least 10,068 buildings in the area have either collapsed or are so heavily damaged that they are condemned. Pariaman, he notes, is located astride one of the world's most active fault-lines. "Every natural disaster you can think of, it has happened here," he says. "Landslides, floods, volcano eruptions, earthquakes, even a tsunami. Some people ask me, why don't you leave? But we are people of faith, and we must face up to these challenges...