Up to 50,000 Indonesian families still lack shelter after May’s earthquake in Java: UN

As many as 50,000 families who lost their homes in the deadly earthquake that rocked Indonesia’s island of Java in May are still without sufficient shelter for the approaching rainy season, the main United Nations humanitarian office warned today, as it highlighted ongoing appeals for funding from the World Bank and other donors.

“To address these families’ needs, the Indonesian Government, UN agencies and other humanitarian partners have developed a joint ‘roof first’ strategy. To date, 23,000 roof structures have been constructed and tens of thousands of additional roofs are planned to be delivered by early 2007,” the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a press release.

“Preliminary conclusions… indicate that 40 per cent of all those who lost their housing remain in insufficient shelter to last the rainy season, which translates into approximately 50,000 families in need of urgent shelter assistance,” it added, referring to the effects of the 27 May earthquake, which killed nearly 6,000 people, injured almost 40,000 and destroyed or damaged more than 300,000 homes and other buildings.

The earthquake’s impact was particularly severe in the city of Yogyakarta and in Klaten and Bantul districts, which suffered the greatest losses. From the start, the Indonesian Government has led the response and reconstruction effort in the wake of the earthquake, with the support of the UN and wider humanitarian community.

Elsewhere, parts of the sprawling archipelago are still recovering from an earthquake off Sumatra island in December 2004 that caused a devastating tsunami which killed more than 230,000 people and affected more than 12 countries in Asia.