Inland village swept away by destructive timber ‘tsunami’
Garoga village is nowhere near the sea yet seasonal floods are expected every year. But on Tuesday last week, a violent surge of water tore through the settlement after two days of constant rain.
Banjar Nahor says water has always been an integral part of life in his village, but the 43-year-old has never experienced anything close to a tsunami.
Garoga village is nowhere near the sea. It sits in a low basin in Indonesia’s North Sumatra, surrounded by rivers. It is a place where seasonal floods are expected every year.
But on Tuesday last week, a violent surge of water tore through the settlement after two days of constant rain.
The water briefly receded before a second, even larger wave carrying massive, freshly cut logs obliterated everything in its path.
“It looked like an ocean wave, like a tsunami looming,” he told The Australian on Thursday as he stood by the side of a road near the riverbank.
The destruction in the settlement is unlike anything seen in neighbouring areas, with tonnes of timber amid the piles of debris, raising suspicion about where the wood had come from.
Men sitting along the roadside pointed to a single company: Sago Nauli, a palm oil firm with a concession in Central Tapanuli. They said that two months ago, the company had started clearing thousands of hectares of land to expand its plantations about 12km away from their village.
The Australian tried to reach out to Sago Nauli’s for a response. There are other companies operating in the area too. They include Agincourt Resources, operator of the Martabe gold mine, and North Sumatera Hydro Energy, developer of a controversial power plant called Batang Toru.
Pahae Julu Micro-Hydro Power is in the area too, along with SOL Geothermal Indonesia, operator of the world’s largest geothermal power plant.
Then there is Toba Pulp Lestari, an Indonesian pulp company that makes pulp from eucalyptus trees, and PTPN III Batang Toru Estate, which operates palm oil plantations.
Since the inland “tsunami”, several of the companies have issued statements denying their operations contributed to the floods and landslides.
WALHI, also known as the Indonesian Forum for the Environment, is the largest environmental advocacy group in the country.
It said all seven companies operated in or around the Batang Toru ecosystem, one of North Sumatra’s last remaining tropical forests.
It said their combined forestry-clearance operations had destabilised the land, weakening its natural ability to absorb heavy rainfall and prevent catastrophic flooding.
The companies also operate within critical habitat for some of Indonesia’s most endangered wildlife, including the Tapanuli orangutan, Sumatran tiger, Malayan tapir, and several other protected species whose survival depends on the integrity of the Batang Toru forests. Another resident of Garoga village, Rahmat Pasaribu, said that in the past the forests had been protected and could not be logged.
“Suddenly it could be logged. We don’t know how,” he said. “They must have gotten a permit, from local government, or from central government, we don’t know.
“There’s pressure behind it. There wouldn’t be all this logging, these mines, PT Sago, or whatever, they wouldn’t be able to do something without someone’s signature.”
The regent of the South Tapanuli region, Gus Irawan Pasaribu, has become embroiled in a public spat with the Forestry Ministry over the source of the logs that have devastated the area. The local leader accused the ministry of signing new logging approvals without the people’s knowledge. The ministry has insisted that no new licences have been granted and that the wood that was swept through Garoga village originated from old, decayed trees or legally permitted plantations.
The Indonesian House of Representatives has demanded an independent investigation to determine whether illegal logging contributed to the disaster.
While officials are debating in Jakarta, everyone in Garoga is grieving. They have lost more than their homes. Entire families were swept away by what residents repeatedly describe as an “unnatural wave”.
Saripudin Pasaribu is mourning his mother-in-law and sister-in-law. They are missing, presumed dead. Others in the village tell similar stories: wives, children and entire households carried off by the surge.
“I saw people being swept away from the side by the bridge. There was a voice calling out, like the call to prayer. It was like someone begging for help. Calling out to God,” Mr Pasaribu said. “It’s terrible. You feel hopeless. You think, ‘we’re going to die too’.”
Rusli, who also lives in Garoga village, lost his young son.
He said he had been running with his wife and child toward the village bridge when the second surge hit. The force of the water tore his family apart, his wife swept in one direction, his son in another.
Rusli spent two days moving from one emergency post to the next before finally locating his wife alive. His son has yet to be found.
“It really was like a tsunami. Whatever was here, it’s just gone,” he said. “The water was so high. We stood here on the bridge watching it all. The water roared past. If we had slipped, we would have died.”
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