Mount Kelud Erupted in Indonesia, How Does It Effected The Economy?

Yogyakarta, Indonesia-14 February 2014
 
It was 5 am in the morning and the sun hasn't come out of their homeland. My cell phone rang and I promised if this isn't an urgent call then I will swear at that person whom called me. It turned out that my sister called me, she looks terrified and yelled at me, "Look outside your window..!". I was jumping from my bed and disclose the curtain and I found out that the ash rain went down, it's quite understanding since I was following news at 3 am and I knew that Mount Kelud at Kediri, East Java has erupted in 13 February 2014 at 22.50 pm. At that moment, the weather forecast said that the wind blows to the west. I was living in Yogyakarta, around 250 kilometers away in west of Mount Kelud. So I wasn't surprised when the ash fell down in Yogyakarta too. I just didn't realize that the impact would be so far away from Kelud.

I wasn't able to see the sunshine at 8 am, it's like a dark cloudy night out there. It appeared around 9 am. The ash rain stopped at 10 am and it caused a layer of ash on the ground around 5 centimeters.

A morning in Yogyakarta. Photo by Lena Lailasari

 

 House and its surroundings. Photo by Furry Oksaridha

 

Since it was Friday, there was a Friday prayer for Moslem men and followed by a cleaning action in my village street. I also cleaned my own house, I had a two floor house and the second floor were 50% roofless to have a sensation of midnight dinner accompanied by the stars or just even to drying clothes or let my husband pigeon stroll. So it was quite a hard thing to collect the volcanic ash then douse with water, it's a sticky road outside and dusty over and over again. I have to mop the floor around 5 times in a day.

At 1 pm, I found out that I have no vegetables or egg to cook that day. I decided to go out and find a market that was open, wearing full protection which was masked, swim eye glasses, hoodie jacket and shoes. On my way to hunted something to eat, I found that nothing there. It's like a dead city at that moment. I counted only Indomaret and Alfamaret-a company of retail franchise, also Giant supermarket which was opening their shop. And I'm so glad that there wasn't a blooming queue at the cashier, it turned out that many people prefer to stay inside their house and not panic or even buy and hoard food supplies.

I went home and cook for an hour, and started to switch on the tv. It looks pretty bad in Kediri and Blitar, the two nearest places from mount Kelud, where the refugees around 10.000 people and increasing more and more.Some people figured it was a Cloudy Valentine indeed.

When mount Kelud erupted, a lightning came several times. Photo taken by Alif Ahmada, 30 kilometers away from the mount crater.

Listed were several airports which were closed until Sunday morning for a recovery : Adisucipto airport Yogyakarta, Djuanda airport Surabaya, Adi Soemarmo airport Solo, Ahmad Yani airport Semarang, Lanud Iswahyudi and Abdul Rahman Saleh Malang.

So, what will it cause for the economy, especially for the most caused area which was East Java, Central Java and Yogyakarta? 

1. Education. The Education Office in Yogyakarta released an announcement that school will be off 2 days. Several Education Office at Solo and Kediri were also confirmed that it was unhealthy for kids to remain entering classes while the volcanic dust were in a high concentration and all over the place. The next thing to do when they get back to school was cleaning their classroom and environment. It took around 2 days to do a complete cleaning, with all parts of the school joined in. 
   
   Indonesian National Army together with society clean the roads in Solo. Photo from Facebook Page-Komunitas Kota Solo
2. Local Market. The vegetable prices increased since there was a huge area of plantation covered by dust. I remembered when Merapi erupted in 2010, the vegetable prices were also increased. Meanwhile, there were less market, supermarket or store opened. It's because the're focus on cleaning their places and environment before they're continuing their work.
3. Economy. Because there were several days off, it means that there were several fields having a more profit and the others were less profit. The more profit fields were : food supplies, drugs and health care, cleaning equipment, hospital, groceries, workshop and car wash. The less profit fields were : accessories, electronics, fashion, furniture. Although the amount of less profit wasn't significant, it was trusted that people were allocated their money to buy several things more important rather than spending it on fashion.
4. Tourism. The side effect of a bombing episodes of news on tv and media around mount eruption was that a spread news of how much does those places wasn't safe enough to be visited by tourist. Only journalist, challenger, doctor or volunteers which were willing to came by in the most damaged area. And people sometimes thought it was still a while until it's safe, in fact, it's a shorter time than they've ever thought. 
5. Banks and Debt. While people's having days off at their job, revenue would be less than their ideal months before. The possibility of bad credit has been thinking carefully by several banks. They will give an extra time of paying their loans if they really couldn't make it on time because of the natural disaster happened. 
6. Transportation.  Since the airport was closed, the next transportation to and from those places were by train and car. PT KAI or Indonesian railway which was the one and only railway company in Indonesia, announced that the tickets to and from the disaster area was sold out.

I'm the eye witness on how to live in Indonesia, side by side with natural disaster and still living in harmony. With a massive natural resources here and the danger of a natural disaster, it's wise to know every kind of disaster, learn about it, deal with it and act in wise mind. I believe that soon the economy will run again with their ideal role.