Increasing Earthquake and Tsunami Preparedness for Women and Elderly in Indonesia

Abstract

Indonesia has faced many natural disasters after the great earthquake and tsunami hit Aceh in 2004. These disasters have affected men, as well as the women. However, the impact of disasters to women and elderly are worse than to men. Indonesia has policies and information kits for earthquake and tsunami preparedness, but it is still not well disseminated to the community, especially for women and elderly. This paper is focusing in increasing the knowledge of women and elderly in earthquake and tsunami preparedness in Indonesia, in order to reduce the numbers of its victims and death tolls. This is a literature review, based on the lessons learned from Japan. The study shows that optimizing the existing self-motivated group/ community organizations would be effective in order to increase the tsunami and earthquake preparedness for women and elderly in Indonesia.