What is causing flooding in the Maldives: Monsoon, tidal wave, storm surge or El Niño?

The waves that hit several islands of the Maldives during the last few days have caused much damage to the islands making even some people homeless.

Islands in Gaafu Dhaalu Atoll have been hit badly according to reports from Minivan News.

There is some debate as to whether the waves are tidal waves or storm surges.

But Mohamed Hussein Shareef (Mundhu) criticised media reports of “tidal waves,” which he said were “complete exaggerations… these are clearly storm surges not tidal waves.”

“Storm surges regularly happen in the Maldives at this time of year… they don’t cause much damage because they recede very quickly,” he added.

However, a top official from National Meteorological Centre disputed the claim that the waves were part of storm surges.

A Meteorological Office forecaster has told Minivan News storm surges are not responsible for last week’s widespread flooding in the Maldives, despite the government’s insistence they are to blame.

“We don’t do oceanography here, be we don’t think it can be storm surges. Storm surges don’t last three of four days. They normally just last one day,” Met Office official, Ibrahim Waheed, told Minivan News on Saturday.

The assistant duty forecaster also said he did not know where the government had obtained the data it had used to confirm storm surges, as he was not aware of any oceanography facility in the Maldives.

There was a tropical storm in Bay of Bengal roughly the same time Maldives was hit by waves. It caused a tidal surge that hit the coastal areas of Bangladesh.

A tidal surge triggered by a storm in the Bay of Bengal swept through coastal districts of Bangladesh and Myanmar on Tuesday, killing at least one fisherman and damaging hundreds of homes, officials said.

Weather officials said the storm, with winds of up to 80 kph (50 mph), crossed the Bangladesh coast at dawn, heading east towards Myanmar.

Even though Maldives was not prepared for the waves, Bangladesh was on alert before the surge hit.

Bangladesh went on cyclone alert on Monday, with officials warning the storm in the Bay of Bengal could trigger a tidal surge two metres high. Nearly 80,000 people were evacuated to cyclone shelters.

Reuters has also reported on the flooding in the Maldives.

Waves from an Indian Ocean storm surge swamped dozens of islands in the low-lying Maldives on Tuesday, the government said.

"It is an annual occurrence at this point of the monsoon. Storm surges are quite common, but it is unusual to have them to the extent we have had today," government spokesman Mohamed Shareef said by telephone from the Maldives' capital, Male.

"It is essentially a rise of the tide. The water came in at least 100 feet (30 metres) on some islands, and then receded in the evening ... It is the low-lying islands that have felt the impact."

There are reasons to believe that the waves that hit Maldives this May are not part of an isolated event but a regional if not a global event. As the week ended Indonesia has become the target of more waves and flooding.

The Jakarta Post has reports on high waves damaging coastal areas of Indonesia on Thursday and Friday.

20^th anniversary of 1987 tidal wave

What the media and the government have failed to emphasise is that this year is the 20^th anniversary of a tidal wave hitting Male’ and some other islands. On 11-12 April 1987 tidal waves hit and flooded a large part of Male’ and caused damages to some 16 other islands.

There was an El Niño phenomenon in 1986-1987. El Niño conditions were prevailing in early 2007. Is it El Niño that caused tidal waves in April 1987 and is it the same phenomenon that is causing waves in the Maldives in May 2007? We do not know yet. But El Niño is known to cause freak weather globally and increases the occurrence of storms. It was the 1997-1998 El Niño which caused severe coral bleaching in the Maldives.

Too early for conclusions

It is too early to jump into conclusions about the cause of the waves hitting the Maldives presently. It is up to the scientific community to monitor the development and put forward theories and evidence. What is important is to provide aid and relief to the people who are in desperate need. We must be aware that climate is changing globally and freak weather patterns are more prevalent now. What we need is a good warning system and a quick emergency response plan as well as a disaster management plan.

The way the country is coping with the current onslaught of waves shows that we have not learned any lessons after the tsunami and that we are not prepared for such disasters.

Controversy over Red Cross workers being held captive in Mundoo

Minivan News reports that three French Red Cross workers were held captive in Mundoo in Laamu Atoll on Friday.

The islanders deny keeping them as hostages. The Head of the French Red Cross Delegation to the Maldives, Emmanuel Vivien, told Minivan News that previous reports in the media that Star Force attacked Mundoo after the incident were false.

Miscommunication within people of islands about the distinctive role of the international NGOs and the government in the tsunami rehabilitation and reconstruction could be a factor that leads to such incidents, according to Minivan News.

The Mundoo incident also shows how little understanding most islanders have of the distinction between Categories of tsunami victims, or of the division between the responsibilities of the Red Cross, the government and its various agencies, and the UN.

Vivien described the many strategies the French Red Cross use to inform tsunami victims of their role in reconstruction. These include a 24-hour hotline manned by Dhivehi speaking staff, newsletters distributed to all islanders and question and answer sessions.

Vivien did not comment on whether the government is equally proactive in keeping victims informed.

Toriq Ibrahim, Director of the government’s Housing and Infrastructure Re-Development Unity (HIRU) was unavailable for comment, as were representatives of the other government agencies involved.

Tsunami victims in Gan protest over sewage system

Minivan News reports that tsunami victims who have recently moved to new homes in Laamu Atoll Gan have protested on Monday demanding a planned sewage system to be completed.

The tsunami victims from Mundoo and Kalhaidhoo moved into French Red Cross homes on Gan in March, but have been forced to defecate in the sea in the absence of a sewage system.

There are also divisions brewing between the people who are natives of Gan and those who shifted because of the tsunami. Such shifts recently made headlines in Alifu Dhaalu Atoll Maamigili as well.

Native Gan islanders claim tsunami victims from Mundoo and Kalhaidhoo are being given superior facilities to those already living on the island.

Residents of Gamuthundi village are demanding their village be incorporated into the planned sewage system.

They have refused contractors access to a key construction site for the sewage system, which is situated on the main road through their village. Since October groups of farmers and fishermen have taken shifts guarding the site to ensure work does not take place.

British Red Cross pulls out of Kolhufushi

British Red Cross has pulled out of Kolhufushi island in Meemu Atoll, after the government and the people of the island failed to come to an agreement over the location of the houses to be built in the tsunami-ravaged island of Maldives, reports Minivan News.

The decision was taken on January 16, and a statement released to Minivan five days later said it had “not been taken lightly.” Funds totalling $3.7m will now be reallocated to other Red Cross projects and the statement says options for where the money is reallocated are currently under discussion with the government.

Earlier in January frustrated protestors blockaded the Island Office in Kolhufushi. Will Jordan from Minivan News visited the island during the peak of the protest and reports his findings.

Apart from the fortunate few whose homes were left more or less intact, everybody on Kolhufushi still lives in temporary shelters. Instead of the bright and spacious homes they have been promised, each family crams into a room no bigger than ten feet by eight. “It’s terrible now. I don’t know what to say…It’s worse than like a jail,” says Hassan Zareer.

The makeshift villages are a sad sight. Single mattresses are propped up against the walls in the tiny terraced rooms. If they are laid flat, they fill half the floor space of a room for five people. The walls are thin partitions which do not reach the ceiling. Privacy is not an option.

Outside, pots and pans balance precariously on tables in the sun and clothes hang on lines. There is no room to store them inside.

Troubled times for people of Kolhufushi

Unrest is brewing in Kolhufushi island in Meemu Atoll. Two years after the tsunami struck, several people are living in temporary shelters. Kolhufushi was one of the worst-affected islands. Minivan News has a report of what is going on.

British Red Cross has also recently explained why reconstruction work on the island has come to a painful halt.

Red Cross defends pace of post-tsunami reconstruction

Jerry Talbot, head of Maldives delegation, for International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Socieities (IFRC) has defended the pace of reconstruction of homes for people affected by the tsunami.

There has been criticism of the pace of reconstruction, and we accept that for people whose homes and livelihoods were destroyed, each day of waiting is a day too long. But from the outset we said that the recovery operation would take more than two years. We will not compromise quality for the sake of speed. Tsunami survivors deserve the best assistance that we can offer, and our experience shows that this takes time.

Furthermore, the success of the recovery effort cannot simply be determined by the number of houses that have been built. Long-term Red Cross Red Crescent recovery efforts are not focused solely on building and reconstructing houses. Permanent shelter is undeniably important, but people didn’t just lose their homes to the tsunami. They lost schools, access to health care and clean water. They lost their livelihoods, their community centres, and most tragically, they lost family members and friends.

Talbot acknowledges that there was limited participation of tsunami survivors in crucial decision-making processes.

The SPHERE project, which outlines the minimum standards for disaster response, states that people affected by a disaster should “have access to an ongoing, reliable flow of credible information”, as well as channels that allow them to communicate with agencies involved in the operation.

In the initial phase of the tsunami recovery operation, international organizations, including the Red Cross and Red Crescent, often failed to meet this important standard. In the rush to provide relief and assistance, the voices of tsunami survivors were often not included in programme planning and implementation.

However, the Red Cross Red Crescent has taken significant steps to rectify this. Across the tsunami-affected region, survivors are now increasingly involved in all stages of the Red Cross Red Crescent effort. In Aceh and in the Maldives, Red Cross and Red Crescent interactive radio shows–serve as a forum for beneficiaries to speak their minds and to raise issues and concerns about the recovery operation.

There have been complaints from tsunami-affected people that the homes that are built for them are not up to their expectations. In many cases there have been limited or no participation of the tsunami survivors in the decision-making process. This has in turn resulted in various complications in several islands. Red Cross now seems to make more efforts to engage the people in the recovery process, as evident from this Dhivehi Observer report.

In a rare media appearance, Jill Clements, the Head of the British Red Cross Mission to the Maldives, on 27 November 2006 told the Maldives media that community participation is key to peaceful transition of internally displaced persons (IDPs) to Thaa atoll Vilufushi. One of the worst hit islands during the tsunami of December 2004, many of the Vilufushi IDPs now live in cramped temporary shelters in neighbouring host island Buruni.

Jill also briefed the media on a unique approach adapted by the British Red Cross with regard to identifying who are most vulnerable and who will get the 250 homes to be built by the BRCS in Vilufushi. She said that the process will be participatory and transparent.

BRCS has acquired the help of a New Delhi based institute called Praxis, an institute credited with "promoting participatory practices".

Previous attempts to rebuild another island, Kolhufushi in Meemu Atoll, was halted because of disagreements between government, residents and NGOs over where houses should be situated. However, with the lessons learnt from Kolhufushi, BRCS turned to people power, and with the assistance of a 16-member committee elected by Vilufushi community, BRCS is presently cross checking information collected, making necessary amendments upon the advise of the committee and the Vilufushi community at large. A free hotline, 800 332 0852, has now been established so that Vilufushi residents not living in temporary shelters in Buruni but living in Male', Hulhumale and Vilingili, can be facilitated to contact the focal station in Buruni.

However, the DO report also outlines some of the on going complaints of the Vilufushi people. One of the concerns is that the new houses to be constructed for them would not be adequate enough to house large extended families.

"Nobody under the age of 50 owns a home of his own in Vilufushi. It has been too decades since the government gave any land plots to new families," a disgruntled Vilufushi resident, who wanted to be identified only as Maniku, told DO.

"There are many cases where many extended families live under one roof. But under the government's 'a house for a house' policy, it is absurd if the government expects families of 20 to 40 members living in 3-room apartments."

More posts from our archive about the tsunami survivors from Thaa Atoll Vilufushi:
Waiting for news from Thaa Atoll
Sick and Injured from Thaa Atoll
Filled with emotion
Sad reunion
Heartbreaking news from Thaa Atoll
Ocean-10 in silence

Two years later

Two years ago, on December 26, water rose from the depths of Indian Ocean, off the coast of Sumatra, formed into a wave of destruction, and swept into coastal settlements of several countries. Homes were destroyed, lives lost, and hopes shattered in Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Maldives. The most destructive tsunami ever known made its impact even on the eastern coast of Africa. Hundred people have been reported to have died from the wave in Somalia.

Two years after the disaster, the shockwaves have not subsided. There have been massive efforts made to rehabilitate and to provide shelter for the homeless. Several international organisations have been working in the Maldives, as well as other tsunami-affected countries, to bring some order to the chaos. They have partnered with the government in the Maldives to conduct various development and reconstruction programmes.

In all tsunami-affected areas, there are complaints of work progressing slowly. However, the organisations engaged in reconstruction point out that the mammoth task of rebuilding communities from scratch is no easy task. Governments have been accused of corruption and mismanagement of tsunami funds.

There is also the question of how prepared we are for another similar disaster. There are big issues at stake, and the most important thing is restoring the livelihood of affected people, to be prepared for future disasters and ensuring that damage from another disaster is mitigated.

Two years later, it is also important to reflect on why we began this blog. We started it to document what we saw. We were not able to update it regularly because of other engagements. It was never meant to provide lengthy reports and do investigative journalism. However, in islands we visited we encountered tsunami-affected people. Most of them have stories to tell, complaints to make, tears to shed. It is not fair not to tell these stories. So on this second anniversary of the tsunami, we are determined to make more efforts to cover how Maldives is coping with the tsunami. After all, that is what we say our blog is about.

Coinciding with this second anniversary we will be publishing more photos of the aftermath of the tsunami. It is a shame that we have not been able to publish any photos of Muha, one of the most talented young photographers in the Maldives, despite the fact that we have had the photos with us for months. Muha, who is currently basking in limelight in Nepal for the Club Hulhevi documentary Himalayan Dreams, travelled to the tsunami-ravaged atolls soon after the disaster struck. His photos will hopefully provide moments to reflect on what happened two years ago to the idyllic islands of the Maldives.

One of the reasons why this blog has not been updated regularly is there are too few people to work on it, and too many other engagements on their part. It is perhaps time to reach out for others who want to tell the story of the tsunami in Maldives, and let their work be published. So if there are any writers or photographers out there wishing to cover how Maldives is coping with the tsunami, then please send an email to us.