SECED 2015 Conference: Earthquake Risk and Engineering towards a Resilient World 9-10 July 2015, Cambridge UK

THE 2007 SOLOMON ISLANDS EARTHQUAKE AND TSUNAMI:

CASCADING EFFECTS AND COMMUNITY RECOVERY

Kim HAGEN1 Abstract: The 2007 Solomon Islands earthquake and tsunami caused extensive damage to several of the country’s islands. Whereas the physical impacts of these hazards on affected communities’ lives and livelihoods have long been addressed, social impacts associated with the events continue to shape relations within and between the affected communities. This paper discusses these effects and their specific origins using a categorisation of triggers of cascading effects developed based on an analysis of nine crises. As this categorisation was based on crises in developed countries, this is an exploratory paper, aimed at investigating to what extent this categorisation applies to a cascading disaster in a developing country. This paper concludes that while similar triggers are of relevance, the ways in which triggers of cascading effects influence communities differs. Introduction Disastrous impacts of hazards can be both short-term and long-term, and can result directly from the event, or indirectly via the cascade of catastrophic effects. Cascading effects in disasters refer to the situation where a disruption of one element causes a sequence of disruptive events, which can cause harmful effects far beyond the initial impacts of the hazard (Little 2010). Cascading effects are not uncommon, but long-term effects often go unnoticed as research on disaster-affected societies is often preoccupied with assessing damage and losses, and therefore largely concerns short-term impacts (Birkmann 2010). This paper addresses this gap by providing insight into cascading effects with long-term social consequences by examining the aftermath of the 2007 Solomon Islands earthquake and tsunami that resulted in immense damage amongst island-communities living in close proximity to the earthquake’s epicentre. Although direct damage to buildings and civil works has long been addressed, livelihoods have been restored, and a daily routine has been re-established, cascading effects presented severe long-term challenges to the social recovery of affected communities. By analysing how cascading disasters can affect the functioning of communities in the long-term, this paper calls for a more holistic perspective in the study of disasters, accounting for the interaction between the hazard and hazard-related triggers of cascading effects. Methodology This paper is based on research carried out as part of a PhD programme focussed on community response and recovery to the 2007 Solomon Islands earthquake and tsunami, as well as research on cascading effects carried out for the FORTRESS (foresight tools for responding to cascading effects in a crisis) project. The former’s contribution to this paper largely consists of the analysis of data collected in the Solomon Islands, through three periods of fieldwork, totalling fifteen weeks, carried out between March 2011 and March 2013. This data was gathered through interviews, participant observation, and the use of participatory methods in focus group discussions in four coastal communities affected by the earthquake and tsunami. Participatory methods included the creation of community profiles indicating changes in communities’ socio-cultural make-up, historical hazard timelines listing significant events in the opinion of members of the affected communities, pre-and post- 1 Ms, Trilateral Research & Consulting, London, kim.hagen@trilateralresearch.com

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tsunami village maps, impact diagrams on primary and secondary effects, post-tsunami timelines on aid interventions and recovery, and cause-and–effect diagrams on the origins of effects associated with the hazardous events. Two of these communities in which focus groups were carried out belonged to the Melanesian ethnic group, indigenous to the Solomon Islands. The other two communities were Micronesian migrants originally from Kiribati, who came to live in the Solomon Islands in the 1950s and 1960s. The data provided knowledge on the social impacts on the community level up to six years after the disaster, as well as insight into the triggers of these impacts. These effects and their triggers were investigated by the means of a categorisation of triggers of cascading effects developed in FORTRESS. As part of this project, nine case studies of disasters with man-made and natural origins were analysed with regard to triggers of cascading effects contributing to the disastrous influences of the events.2 In contrast to the 2007 Solomon Islands earthquake and tsunami, none of these disasters took place in developing countries. Research into the triggers of cascading effects in these nine case studies was predominantly carried out by the means of a desk-based review of research reports, news articles and academic literature. This analysis produced six categories of triggers of cascading effects: the disruption of pre-established information relations (e.g., phone lines are made inaccessible obstructing communication between disaster responders), the disruption of pre-established relations of supply (e.g., the supply of water is cut off, leading to a shortage of drinking water), the disruption or malfunctioning of organisational relations (e.g., inadequate decision-making constrains effective disaster response), the malfunctioning of legal and regulatory relations (e.g., lack of enforcement regarding the execution of anti-seismic safety checks), disturbance relations (these concern unintended relations that came into being during the crisis), and pre-disaster conditions (e.g., pre-existing social relations). In this exploratory paper, this categorisation informed by disasters in developed countries is used to examine the cascading social impacts on the community level related to an earthquake and tsunami in a developing country: the Solomon Islands. Contextual setting of the Solomon Islands The Solomon Islands are an archipelago nation located in the South Pacific Ocean, and are classified as a Least Developed Country by the United Nations. The vast majority of its population relies on subsistence-oriented farming and fishing activities (Govan et al. 2013). These people inhabit 350 of the country’s 992 islands - the remaining islands are often too small or too isolated to be suitable for permanent residence. The islands owe their existence to the seismic activity and processes of subduction between four tectonic plates: the Pacific, Australian, Woodlark, and Solomon Sea plates (Neall and Trewick 2008, Petterson et al. 1999). As Figure 1 indicates, the Solomon Sea plate, the Woodlark plate, and the Australian plate are currently subducted below the Pacific plate at the destructive plate boundary south-west to the Solomon Islands.

2 The disasters included the Galtür avalanche in Austria (1999), the Enschede fireworks factory explosion in the Netherlands (2000), the Central-European floods (2000), the European heatwave (2003), the London bombings (2005), the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan (2011), hurricane Sandy in the USA (2012), and the MH17 plane crash in the Ukraine (2014).

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Figure 1 Tectonic setting of the Solomon Islands (United States Geological Survey (USGS) 2007)

Due to high rates of convergence between the Australian and Pacific plates, the eastern margin of the Australian plate is one of the most seismically active areas of the world (Benz et al. 2011). This causes high shallow seismic activity at the destructive plate boundary south-west of the Solomon Islands. Figure 2 illustrates the high level of shallow (0-69 kilometres in depth) seismic activity in the Solomon Islands between 1900 and 2010.! !!

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Figure 2 Earthquakes in the Solomon Islands 1900-2010 As illustrated by the legend, the earthquakes indicated by a red circle are those of shallow depth, and earthquakes of intermediate depth are indicated by green circles. The absence of blue circles indicates that no very deep earthquakes occurred in this area in the given timeframe. The larger the circle, the higher the magnitude of the earthquake; the largest earthquakes are accompanied by a reference to the year in which they took place. Circles with a white ring around them are earthquakes of magnitude 8.0 or higher. The yellow triangles indicate active volcanoes (Benz et al. 2011). !

2007 Solomon Islands earthquake and tsunami On 2 April 2007, at 07:39 AM local time (April 1 2007, 20:39 UTC), an 8.1-magnitude submarine earthquake occurred at a depth of 10 kilometres in the Solomon Islands’ Western Province, 45 kilometres from the province’s capital Gizo, located on Ghizo Island (USGS 2007). Despite frequent seismic activity, this was the first earthquake larger than magnitude 7.0 to hit the area since the early 20th Century. The islands of Ghizo, Ranongga, Simbo, Vela Lavela, Kolombangara, Vonavona, Rendova, and New Georgia experienced the most severe shaking, as they were located closest to the earthquake’s epicentre (USGS 2007).!! The earthquake caused the water above the faultline where the earthquake occurred to rise, resulting in a series of tsunami waves which hit surrounding islands within five minutes (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) 2007). Ghizo Island was impacted severely, and accounted for 33 out of the 52 fatalities. The combination of the earthquake and tsunami caused extensive damage on this island, as well as on other islands. Villages in coastal areas were severely damaged or washed away. Often permanent buildings, made of concrete and cement blocks, were the only structures that remained standing. Coastal ‘leaf buildings’, made of sago-palm leaves on a timber frame, and semi-permanent houses, with a base and walls made of timber, were often completely destroyed. Whereas the tsunami was responsible for destroying whole villages in the coastal areas, it is likely this process was facilitated by the earthquake weakening the structures in the villages, as semi-permanent buildings in villages untouched by the tsunami also suffered damage.

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Aid interventions and the local context Due to its isolated location and the damage to the area’s main airstrip, Ghizo’s affected villagers initially relied on their own coping mechanisms for survival. After four days, the first aid from outside the affected area arrived. An initial generous delivery of aid aimed at stabilising the emergency situation is characteristic of how disaster aid interventions are shaped. The arrival of aid after the 2007 earthquake and tsunami was no exception to this. Various organisations and institutions donated vast amounts of humanitarian aid to the affected islands (IFRCRCS 2008). Similar to the positive appraisal of humanitarian aid recorded by Mulligan and Nadarajah (2011) and Telford and Cosgrave (2007) in their evaluations of the aid interventions after the Indian Ocean tsunami, Ghizo’s affected population received the humanitarian aid with open arms. In focus groups they expressed that there was an abundance of aid, and that all items they needed to survive were provided. However, aid intervention becomes less straightforward when its humanitarian character diminishes and shifts towards a focus on recovery and the re-establishment of infrastructure and services. Instead of handing out much needed items, it becomes increasingly important to carry out damage and needs assessments, and to take account of the demands of the affected people and the politics on the ground. It was in this process of addressing the damage caused by the earthquake and tsunami that several actions and decisions were taken that negatively affected the long-term social recovery of the affected communities in a cascading manner. The most important triggers are discussed below. Triggers of cascading effects From the moment disaster aid reached the areas affected by the earthquake and tsunami, the lack of inter-agency organisation was evident. In relation to the categorisation of triggers of cascading effects developed in FORTRESS, this could be identified as the malfunctioning of an organisational relation. This was predominately expressed through flaws in communication, coordination, cooperation, and management amongst those providing aid (Oxfam Australia 2009). Whereas a certain degree of chaos is characteristic of many cases of disaster response, and had also been identified in the case studies analysed for FORTRESS, what stood out in the institutional response to the 2007 earthquake and tsunami was the absence of guidelines or protocols on how to respond. This strongly contrasted with what had been observed in the case studies analysed in the FORTRESS project, none of which had focused on developing countries. Although specifics varied, in all the FORTRESS case studies emergency response plans had played a role in the management of the disaster. In the Solomon Islands, a national disaster response plan had been created in 1987, twenty years prior to the 2007 events, and had only sporadically been updated. As a result, the country’s Provincial Disaster Councils (extension units of the country’s National Disaster Council (NDC), which has the responsibility of coordinating disaster management) were ‘dormant and non-functional’ (NDC 2007: 7, 10). Aid agencies arriving shortly after the 2007 hazards operated without guidelines providing structure to their efforts. Several weeks after arriving in the affected areas, the organisations acted on the lack of coordination and cooperation that hindered their efforts on the ground, and agreed on a division of labour. Approximately one-and-a-half months after the earthquake and tsunami hit, three NGOs (Save the Children, World Vision, and Oxfam) divided the affected areas between themselves and jointly managed their funds as well as the funds of two main donors, AusAID and NZAID (UNOHCHR 2007). Despite the fact that NGOs actively started to address organisational issues of coordination and cooperation, the approach taken can be seen as a trigger of long-term negative social changes in the affected communities. Up to the point of reorganising aid interventions, NGOs and national authorities of the Solomon Islands had independently carried out assessments of what was needed to rebuild lives and livelihoods. The three NGOs that took control, found that these needs assessments were at times incomplete and decided to assess the affected

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areas once again. Another round of aid assessments prompted frustration amongst the affected people. In interviews carried out in 2012, survivors commonly expressed they did not understand why organisations asked them to take part in several overlapping needs assessments. Additionally, interview data indicated that while the three NGOs had decided to carry out new assessments, it was not always clear to the assessed communities that this implied the previous assessments were void. It illustrates the absence of a well-functioning relation that should have been established as part of the organisation of aid interventions, namely a relation of communication between those providing aid and those receiving it. The under-informing of disaster-affected populations about the intentions of (foreign) aid organisations is not new, and has been underlined in literature on the Indian Ocean Tsunami (e.g., Christoplos 2006). However, the implications this can have for the affected populations, are shaped by the characteristics of the local context. On Ghizo, survivors’ misunderstanding of the ways needs assessments were organised, triggered unrealistic expectations of aid: survivors commonly believed all organisations that had carried out assessments would provide them with aid regarding most, if not all, topic areas covered in the assessments. On its own, this was not a factor that triggered long-term negative social effects, but in combination with pre-disaster conditions inherent to the local context this resulted in adverse social processes influencing the recovery of the affected communities. These pre-disaster conditions related to the presence of inter- and intra-community relations of power on Ghizo. Regarding inter-community relations, the wantok (one talk) system played a significant role in shaping social effects that concerned the recovery of the communities. The Solomon Islands as a whole are characterised by the wantok system: a localised system of social capital related to differences between ethnic identity groups and the languages they speak (Fukuyama 2008). Individuals belonging to a certain wantok group have shared responsibilities and codes of behaviour through which they protect each other. Wantokism frequently shapes political alliances (Turnbull 2002), and having a wantok in a powerful position means that fellow wantoks can profit from this. Such a localised system based on social ties and language operates very differently from systems adopted by humanitarian agencies. On Ghizo, the NGO leading the aid interventions employed Solomon Islanders from various wantok groups to assist in the assessment of needs and distribution of aid. At times Solomon Islanders from one wantok group would be working in another wantok group. Amongst the survivors, the power associated with the wantok system generated suspicions that members of other wantok groups would confiscate aid in the form of materials for the benefit of their own group. As survivors had unrealistic expectations of aid related to the multiple assessments, they received less aid than they assumed they would, which generated beliefs that other wantok groups were to blame for the shortage of aid. Feelings of distrust and suspicion increased, exacerbating pre-existing inter-group relations, especially those between the Melanesian and Micronesian groups. On an intra-community level, pre-disaster conditions regarding the position of community leaders and elders influenced how unrealistic expectations of aid negatively influenced the relations present within communities. All four communities were characterised by hierarchical structures in which older men lead the community, and bear the responsibility for taking decisions on matters that arise in the community. Community members were to respect the leaders or elders and not to contradict their decisions. Prior to the earthquake and tsunami such relations were present in all four communities and were generally perceived to be positive pillars of community cohesion. Perhaps not surprisingly, many of these male leaders took up positions in the village disaster committees that the provincial government asked them to erect after the 2007 earthquake and tsunami, in order to facilitate distribution of aid within the community. However, similar to the issue of wantoks, the perceived absence of aid affected the intra-community relations. As community members did not receive the aid they expected, they started to accuse the village disaster committee of being involved in the disappearance of aid. This triggered a change in community members’ perception of

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hierarchical intra-community relations. What was once considered a positive force of structure within the community started to be viewed as a source of corruption and wrongdoing, and in all four communities intra-community suspicions arose. Placing additional strain on the increased tensions was the fact that those who suffered damage from the tsunami received more aid than those who were ‘only’ affected by the earthquake. As the tsunami was the larger force of destruction, it took a more prominent place in the allocation of aid. Survivors whose houses had been affected by the earthquake, but were far enough inland not to have suffered additional damage from the tsunami, expressed they received less aid than their fellow community members. This contributed to the friction that arose within communities. Social community recovery: six years later These intra- and inter community tensions continued to rise as aid interventions were ongoing, and eventually triggered conflict in all affected communities. Although physical violence was absent, people who belonged to the same community ceased to communicate and interact with one another. As the aid interventions continued, the conflict continued to grow, eventually leading to divides in all four communities. In two communities people moved away to various places surrounding the original locations of their villages. Two other communities became characterised by a geographical divide in terms of a group of people living uphill and another group living at the coast. Participants in all four focus groups made clear that in their opinion the conflict ended when the aid interventions ended, as the latter was the stimuli for the conflict. Nevertheless, they expressed the view that their former communities no longer existed. People continue to be divided, both geographically as well as socially. Community cohesion diminished drastically, and whereas people have come to a stage of acceptance of the altered situation within their former communities, resentment over what happened prevails. Conclusion Long after the physical damage of the 2007 Solomon Islands earthquake and tsunami has been addressed, the affected communities continue to experience negative social effects related to the disastrous events. Former communities split up into various parts, and little interaction exists between them. As these social long-term changes were not direct but indirect consequences of the earthquake and tsunami, it is important to study how such effects are related to the 2007 events, therefore enhancing the understanding of the kinds of extensive legacies hazards can have. This paper examined how negative social impacts shaping community recovery originated, by investigating them in relation to a categorisation of triggers of cascading effects as developed in the FORTRESS project. Whereas this categorisation was developed based on an analysis of disasters in developed countries, the 2007 earthquake and tsunami concern a developing country. The study of the extent to which the categorisation of triggers applies to a country such as the Solomon Islands is therefore exploratory, but gives an indication of how cascading effects in disasters in a country such as the Solomon Islands may have different causes from commonly identified triggers in developed countries. Additionally, it provides insight into ways in which disaster management in developing countries can result in unintended long-term social effects on the community level. What stood out in the analysis of negative social impacts characterising community recovery is that these processes were caused by a combination of factors identified as individual triggers in the categorisation of triggers of cascading effects developed in FORTRESS: the malfunctioning of organisational relations, flaws in information and communication relations between aid agencies, and pre-disaster conditions. In isolation, these factors may not have resulted in the effects observed on Ghizo. First of all, the malfunctioning of organisational relations in disaster management was not triggered by the disruption of existing disaster

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management protocols; it had its origins in the absence of a functional disaster management plan. The lack of coordination and cooperation associated with this was acknowledged by aid organisations as potentially affecting their response operations in a negative way. As such, they recognised this as a potential trigger of cascading effects and addressed this by re-organising their operations. Remarkably, this attempt to limit negative effects could be seen as a factor contributing to triggering negative long-term social consequences. Flaws in communicating a revised approach created unrealistic expectations of aid among the affected population, which formed a component of the trigger of cascading social effects. However, it was only in combination with the fact that the main actors operating on Ghizo were agencies external to the country, that this negatively influenced pre-existing community structures. Different from the disasters analysed in FORTRESS, where a prominent role was ascribed to in-country disaster management actors, the actors operating on Ghizo were largely alien to the local context, and failed to account for the pre-existing relations between and among communities affected by the earthquake and tsunami. In a combined manner these factors triggered negative social consequences of which it is highly unlikely that they would have been triggered by one factor in isolation. Whereas these findings need to be set against the fact that this is an exploratory study of differences and similarities between triggers of far-reaching effects, the findings present exemplary evidence of the fact that hazards such as earthquakes should not be studied in isolation of the social context in which they occur. In relation to the occurrence of a hazard, various factors can trigger long-term social impacts on the community level. Attention should be paid to identifying and addressing such triggers in a variety of settings to enhance a greater understanding of how social effects related to geological hazards are generated. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This paper is based on research emanating from an Open University and British Geological Survey funded PhD studentship, and the European Commission-funded FORTRESS project (Foresight tools for responding to cascading effects in a crisis) under grant agreement number 607579. The views in this paper are those of the author and are in no way intended to reflect those of the abovementioned intuitions. REFERENCES Benz, H. M., Herman, M., Tarr, A. C., Hayes, G. P., Furlong, K. P., Villaseñor, A., Dart, R. L., and Rhea, S. (2011) Seismicity of the Earth 1900-2010 eastern margin of the Australia plate, United States Geological Survey

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