http://blogs.usyd.edu.au/vicindonblog/2007/09/lakelapindoakamrbakriessw.html
14 September, 2007 Lake Lapindo, aka Mr Bakrie's swimming pool
by Adrian Vickers
My trip to Indonesia wasn't just to escape the state-of-war- and-siege that
had been declared in the centre of Sydney for APEC, but also to work on a
couple of my other research projects. Nevertheless, I had time to do a bit of
disaster tourism, visiting the poisonous mud volcano that was created in
Sidoarjo, just south of Surabaya airport.
I was running late for the Panji festival because my plane from Jakarta to
Surabaya had been canceled, as had all the planes to Surabaya that morning. I
feared another airport disaster, but it turned out that they just decided to
close down Surabaya airport, the busiest hub to Eastern Indonesia, because the
president was visiting! And they wonder why Indonesia has problems with
national productivity (while I was in Jakarta Kompas had a great expose on this
kind of self-important overkill that preoccupies Indonesian public officials.
One of their journalists got hold of theillegalprice- lists that local police
stations produce for those who want to hold motorcades. You too can stuff up
the traffic, for a price).
Anyway, despite being 4 hours late, I couldn't resist stopping off on the
road to Malang to see the Lapindo disaster. For those not familiar with this,
just over a year ago employees of the company Lapindo were doing exploratory
drilling when they set off a huge eruption of poisonous mud. There are various
accounts of how this occurred. Mr Bakrie, one of the owners of Lapindo, but
also a government minister, claims it is entirely natural, and he continues in
his post. Others more expert claim that it is because the drillers did not
follow proceduresbasically they cut corners to save time and money by not
using proper casings on the drills. Whatever the cause, the mud continues to
flood out. It has destroyed a major highway, ruined factories and other forms
of livelihood, and most importantly wiped out the houses of between 12,000 and
13,000 people. The mud is still hot, and the sulphurous smell is horrendous. A
number of people have already died in attempts to stop the
flow (including the dropping of large concrete balls down the main source).
The victims of the disaster show sightseers around. For Rp20,000 you can get
a bike ride up to the central lake, and other enterprising people have made
DVDs of the event, including the related explosion of a Pertamina gasline in
November 2006. The people in the area claim to have received small amounts of
payment from Lapindo for six months, but so far have not received any real
compensation, and are reliant on government handouts. Predictions are that the
eruption is creating a huge vacuum under the mud lake, and that the whole area
could collapse.
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