For me, there was nothing quite as awe inspiring as seeing a live volcano.

A year and a half ago, i had visited the Indonesian city of Jogjakarta (Sanskrit yogyakarta) to shoot a part of my documentary on Disaster Risk Reduction. The documentary looked at communities living in disaster prone areas – and the actions that they took to mitigate the effects of nature.

Mount Merapi – in Yogyakarta last blew in 2006.
the villagers living a lava puff away from the mountain survived because they were trained to ! they said that they love the area, and love the mountain and will learn to live with the volcano and its fumes.

When it last erupted, there was no loss of life, nor was there major disruption to livelihood or major damage to property.

The reason being that they adopted good practices from Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR).

One of the activities that local communities undertook was the planting of saplings -which would grow into trees and hold the soil to prevent it from being eroded under the force of lava flow.

Afterall, the heat has the ability to reduce everything to a burnt out shell.

An early warning system was the Kentongen – a system that allows the village to warn people that the volcano was about to erupt to allow people to escape to a higher level.

IT was this awareness of the hazard and training in ways to mitigate the effects of the hazard that allowed people in the foothills of the Merapi to lead a ‘normal’ life

Today, when i read reports of dozens dead it is with sadness. Yet, i know that but for the work of NGO”s who work tirelessly in the area of DRR – the death toll would have been even higher.