The Earthquake and Tsunami Museum established in Nias

BY: JOSEPH VIANDRITO

The Earthquake and Tsunami Museum has been established in Sirombu Nias and was officially launched by Ausaid and local government on May 6, 2008. As the first Earthquake and Tsunami Museum in Indonesia, the museum has attracted many people to visit it till now. In Thailand, the tsunami museum is well known among tourists.

Sirombu is chosen, since the area is hardly hit by earthquake and tsunami in last 2004 and 2005. Visitors can see some ruin buildings in the area and get lessons. The area is declared as “the Tsunami and Earthquake Sanctuary”, a memorial statue has been set up to make everybody can show their respect to the victims by putting some flowers or just pray.

The goal of establishing the museum is to set a place to learn everything we want to know about earthquakes and tsunami and how we should prepare. Some information are provided like: why the ground shakes, how scientists study quakes, great quakes of the past, some survival stories, map of the past earthquakes around Nias and also the world, and what we can do to prepare for disaster.

The wall of museum is covered by banners of all targeted village. The banners show some mottos in local language to demonstrate how the village prepare for disaster.

Besides disaster information, the museum is also designed to make people a bit scary, by providing some frightening pictures, like victims, destruction and also list of victim names.

A computer -provides some short films about disaster- is prepared if visitor want to watch it. The museum also displays film in big screen if needed.

Apart of “what we can do to prepare” section, the museum also provides some additional information about health resilience. That’s why the museum also called as “Health Resilience Information Centre”. Secondly, the museum also want to make people aware of the “Silent Tsunami”, the new term that is introduced by United Nations, to define the danger of hunger problem, due to food shortage recently.

Accordingly, the museum is also called as “Vitamin Garden Centre”, to provide visitors with some information on how to deal with the “Silent Tsunami”. A garden, consist of many useful plants, has been set up.

Hundreds of visitor has been explored the museum, as well as many school teachers had been brought their students to visit the museum.