The Day The Earth Shook

My Earthquake

So this is it, the bus journey of all bus journeys. I mean, i'v had some travelling transportation tales along my adventure through Asia, some uncomfortable trips, some long rides - but nothing could have prepared me for this one!!!

After my night up on the ridge in the middle of the island Samosir, which was in the middle of the volcanic lake of Toba, I took an incredible motorbike trip down the other side of the island, with great views of the vast lake and passing rice-fields and countryside along the way!!! I then took the boat back to the mainland - and the town of Parapat where I would get my bus trip onwards.

Sumatra is big. It's the 6th largest island in the world and I believe - the largest in SE Asia. So when they said that it was going to be 15 hours from where I was - to Bukittinggi (located at the western but central part of the island) I thought that sounded reasonable enough. That was however, if there were no delays on the way....there turned out to be many delays. This is exactlly how it happened;

We set off - travelling south. About 4 hours down, we reach a crappy food hole (restaurant) - their version of a service stop. As I finished my food - the man collecting my bill starts asking me the usual questions - where I come from, what football team I support etc. etc. He then asked me what I do - I told him I had just finished studying natural disasters and then reeled off each one knowing he probably wouldn't have a clue what I was talking about but doing it anyway. When I reached - Earthquake - he stopped me - "ahhh earthquakes" he said - the only word he seemed to understand. I get back on the bus, waiting for everyone else to get on - so we can get on.

As I sit down the bus jerks forward a few feet. Weird. Then it jolts back a few feet. Very weird. Then forward and back again. The bus being shaken all over the place like a toy. I quickly realised it was an earthquake. No-one said anything - we all started getting off the bus as we notice it edging towards the restaurant building. As we step off it stops. Shaking lasted about 5-6 seconds, only horizontal in movement but felt quite strong. I asked a German couple (the only other westerners on the bus) what it was like being on the ground - they said "like walking on jelly". No-one was hurt, a dog was barking and a few children were crying but thats about it. The power did get knocked out in the restaurant though.

We continued on our bus journey, passing small towns along the way. Every town had had their power taken out too. People were huddled around fires they had set up outside their houses. We saw one power-line had crashed to the floor and there was other minor damage too. We also drove by one man who was clearly unconscious. It was interesting to see their response though - no-one was panicking, everyone was calm - natural disasters is something you have to live with if your home is Sumatra.

We continue for an hour or two and then we stop. We get news that further up the road a bridge had collapsed. This was not good. The Trans-Sumatran Highway (TSH) was now out of order, or at least for this stretch of the road. Let me explain to you about the roads in sumatra - they don't really have any. To connect the entire island from north to south - there is one main road - the TSH. It's not like a motorway or even a big, wide road -it's just a normal one lane road that you would find anywhere - except of course that this one is full of potholes. However, if this road becomes unusable - you can't just turn back and find a quick side road to re-direct you. So for us it meant having to go back the way we came, heading further north than Parapat, then looping round to the other side of the island and finally stretching back south to rejoin the TSH. Consequently and most bizarly, at the time that we were meant to be at our destination, we were actually further away from it, than where we started from!!!

I will tell you - it added an extra 21 hours to my journey, ultimately meaning I was confined to a bus for 36 hours in total. I had essentially lost an entire day of my travels. This had two major implications. Because I was travelling through Indonesia on a tight timescale and had planned to go to 6 volcanic regions along the way, this loss of a day made my trip too tight for time and so I cut one of my volcano locations out. I had basically lost the opportunity to see one natural hazard because another one got in the way. I had unwillingly traded in a volcano for an earthquake. I would take the swap this time but I didn't want any more diversions to my trip. The second implication of the earthquake only became clear to me a few days later......

The earthquake wasn't the only obstacle which extended the journey time by such ridiculous proportions. We broke down - twice, and we were also very nearly involved in an accident when a car almost miss-timed it's overtaking manouver of a lorry and thus nearly became the filling of a bus-lorry sandwhich.

While we were travelling, I wondered how big the earthquake was, how many injured and if this was the main earthquake or could we expect another one to follow. I later found out all these answers on the USGS website. It was a 6.0 magnitude earthquake, with a shallow focus of 10km and it's epicentre was almost on top of where we were (perhaps slightly south of our location at the time). It was recorded at a time of 21:26:45 (local Indonesian time) on Monday 19th May, 2008 - and it had caused me a whole lot of grief!!!