The tsunami in Indonesia: the difficulty of reporting from a disaster area – TV coverage

The new correspondent in Indonesia, Anne Barker, was not scheduled to officially start working until a few days after a massive earthquake and tsunami struck central Sulawesi province. She rushed to join cameraman Phil Hemingway and producer Ari Wu on five difficult and arduous days in the disaster area, where more than 1,500 people died and thousands more left homeless and homeless. traumatized.

First time covering a major disaster

The life of a foreign correspondent is always unpredictable, a great story breaks out and everything is dropped to cover it, but I was not quite in that head space, because I had just come from To arrive in Indonesia when the earthquake struck.

It was Friday and I had just brought all my luggage to an apartment in which I had to move in on Monday, so I only had a small bag of clothes to allow me to spend the weekend at the hotel.

That night, I learned that I was going to Sulawesi the next morning, so I had to take what I had and travel light, which is better anyway.

I was always setting up my phone when we left.

It was difficult to fly to Palu, one of the worst hit places, so we took two flights to reach Mamuju, a few hundred kilometers to the west, and we prepared to go there.

We rented a car, bought a generator, two fuel jerrycans and stocked up on food, water and supplies.

I had never faced a major disaster like this and I could not really imagine what I would face when I got there.

Phil bought apples and chocolate and biscuits, which I discovered later, was not very useful for keeping you for several days.

We drove for 3-4 hours until dusk and stayed in a hotel that night.

The next day we had another seven hours to travel to Donggala, one of the first cities to be hit hard.

We had a satellite phone that we could use for calls and a BGAN satellite terminal to transmit footage, but it takes a lot longer than the LiveU unit, which relies on the mobile network.

Rare food, water and accommodation

Towards dusk, we left Donggala to reach Palu, which usually takes an hour, but it took more than two and a half hours because the road was badly damaged and there were a lot of people on the road.

We were given the name of a hotel where we could possibly stay but when we arrived, we discovered that it had collapsed during the earthquake.

We tried two other hotels without success, then we found one that would give us a room to store our equipment, but we were not allowed to sleep because of the ceaseless replicas.

There were about 20 other people sleeping on mats in the lobby and still others on the outside and we all had to share a bathroom, with a toilet that did not pull the hunt and one " mandi ", a giant bucket of water with a spoon to use for washing and rinsing the toilet.

It was enough to smile and bear this, but since so many people shared the same feeling, the bathroom was actually very clean.

The second night, the stakes of Phil's tent broke. So he slept in the car and I tried to sleep in the hotel room where we were tidying up our equipment, but I was awakened by a big aftershock.

He had survived a magnitude 7.5 earthquake and I was wondering if he would stay up, but Phil came in and told me to get out of there.

My colleague David Lipson arrived by plane on Tuesday and brought some simple mattresses. The third night we slept outside on mattresses with mosquito nets.

It was as good as we were bringing cans of gas, because there were huge queues, one kilometer long in Palu, and we needed to run the generator to recharge the batteries of our phone and from our camera.

Witness of mass death and sorrow

When we first arrived in the disaster area, the magnitude of the devastation shocked me.

I did not see a disaster area like that.

Half of the buildings in the city were still standing, but many areas, such as the beach, were completely devastated.

Seeing the extent of the devastation there, where there were houses completely washed or washed further down the beach, was shocking.

I remember seeing objects left in the ground, like toilets or foundations, a mattress covered with the sea.

And then things like photos and albums; Personal and intimate stuff that you would be horrified if it was up to you to see them scattered on the beach.

Aside from the death of my father and years ago in Darwin, when I saw the body of a man hit by a car, I had not really seen corpses.

Here though, I went to the morgue and saw a lot of body wraps and it was a shock to me.

I had read the smell of death but I had never met her.

Now I know this smell and I feel that she will never leave me.

The beach was full of grieving people looking for family members.

We interviewed a woman who had indicated a house where she had lost all her family. They were all gone and she was upset.

Curiously, people were extremely comfortable talking to us in front of the camera, unlike what I found in Australia.

Here, nine out of ten people wanted to be interviewed, even in their greatest grief.

It was as if they saw us as some kind of advisor, they were grateful to have someone sit down and listened to their story.

But it was difficult.

I felt terribly overwhelmed by their life and sorrow and in the end you got up and walked away while they were still sobbing.

You are not a counselor, you do not claim to be a counselor, you are a journalist telling a story and you have the luxury of being able to withdraw.

An emergency trip to the hospital

It was hot all the time we were there and it was hard to cope with the situation.

I've already lived in the tropics, but it really hits you.

On the second day of filming on the beach, our Indonesian producer, Ari Wu, nearly collapsed due to his dehydration and I had to take him to the hospital.

Obviously, no story is worth putting someone's health at risk and you always put your safety and that of your team first.

It turned out that he had not eaten enough or drank, and his electrolytes fell out.

We had a package containing electrolytes with us, but we did not understand that this was the problem.

The hospital was flooded with wounded.

They put Ari on a drip and after sleeping about two and a half hours, he felt better and we were able to leave and go back to work.

Phil was editing and sending back images to Sydney and we had to contact him as soon as possible so that I could record and send my voice off.

The deadline was imminent.

Frustrated, our driver was gone, so we had to pray for a ride and we got lost along the way.

On big stories like this, you often think that you can just forget about the luxury of food and drink until the end of the day, once you've fulfilled your obligations regarding ranking. in trouble if you do not take care of yourself.