The Last Bastion of the Lapindo Mudflow
On Friday two weeks ago, the gush of underground mud in Porong, Sidoarjo, some 200 meters from the Banjar Panji I gas exploration well owned by PT Lapindo Brantas, was exactly three years old. Fifty thousand people in 12 villages were rendered homeless by the disaster. This could be only the beginning of the tragedy. In March, a ring dam surrounding the source of mud collapsed as the earth beneath subsided. A daily flow of 100,000 cubic meters of mud is now directly impacting the external dam as the only dividing wall between 64 million cubic meters of mud and settlements. If this 3-meter-wide fortress gives way, a calamity like that in Situ Gintung, Tangerang, may recur.
June 9, 2009
FROM the dam 10 meters high, Sunarto pointed to a spot on the surface of the sea of mud. He only did so for a moment. His stretched finger moved again and stopped in the direction of a more condensed part of the mire. “That’s where my house stood,” he said. “But it seems to have been east of it,” he added doubtfully.
Frustrated by his failure to locate his former home, the father of two picked up a stone. “No! It may have been there
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