HKU Bulletin May 2005 (Vol. 6 No. 3)

NEWS ROUND-UP 3 2 Helping Victims to Rebuild W hile most of us were digging deep into our pockets to help victims of the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami, Paul Cheung was setting himself up as a one-man relief agency. Dr Cheung, Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, is the ‘lead shepherd’ of the APEC Industrial Science and Technology working group, received from a colleague in Indonesia an urgent e-mail on January 1, 2005 asking for help in securing a desalination system to provide drinking water for survivors in the a W re i a th . in two weeks, Dr Cheung had started Project Clean Aqua, raised more than $500,000 from his personal funds, friends and family, flown to the United States to inspect, purchase and learn to operate a desalination system, and escorted it to the Posko (Camp) Jenggala for survivors in Aceh. He arrived to a land flattened, de-vegetated and littered with corpses and debris. With the help of Ted Kuepper, an expert in desalination systems and Executive Director of Global Water, a non-profit non-government organization in the US, he successfully installed the system in Camp Jenggala in Lhok Nga, just outside Banda Aceh. “It was a humbling experience,” he said. “The people were amazing, they had lost everything – their homes and families – but they had internal strength. They quickly moved on to build up their lives again, rather than trying to find blame. Hong Kong people could learn a lot from them.” The camp is designed to hold about 500 people and feed another 1,500, but had only enough money to keep going for three months when Dr Cheung came along. He and his major donors felt they could be more effective by concentrating their money on the one camp and letting the local people use it for the purposes they thought best. “It turned out the desalination system was not the most urgent need. They needed money, so that’s what we gave them. It will be up to the people there to decide how to use it – they know where the need is,” he sa T id h . e camp’s operating costs are US$10,000 a month and it will take about a year to construct new homes for survivors, with each home costing about US$1,500 (HK$12,000) which is the cost of material only. The people in the camp help each other to rebuild their homes. One by one they are rebuilding, the first two houses have been finished to be shown as ‘model homes’. “The people in these areas want to help themselves. The best thing we can do is tell them they are not alone and bring them what we can. They have to help themselves,” Dr Cheung said. Hydrologists Provide Clean Water A n engineering academic relieved some of the hardship in the aftermath of the Asian tsunami by hand delivering 15,000 water purification tablets to the Sri Lankan government. Dr Amithirigalal Jayawardena, Senior Lecturer and an expert in hydrology in the Department of Civil Engineering, bought the tablets in Hong Kong with colleague Associate Professor Dr Lam Kit Ming, paying for them out of their own pockets. Then he boarded a flight for Colombo and dropped the tablets off at the National Water Supply and Drainage Board of the Sri Lankan government. “As a result of the tragedy, many of the wells near the coastal areas have been contaminated with sea water making them unsuitable for domestic use,” he explained. “Water had to be transported from different sources and stored in small tanks at strategic locations in the affected areas for the villagers’ use. The water purification tablets were meant to be used in these tanks to kill pathogenic bacteria,” he added. The tablets would have supplied about two to three weeks worth of drinkable water to villages along the west coast. “As far as water supply is concerned the problem has been managed quite well by the government; there has been no outbreak of water-borne diseases,” he said. Responding to a call from the Hong Kong Institution of Engineers for volunteers, he has also signed up with the Red Cross in Hong Kong to make himself available for any long-term reconstruction advice that any affected country in the region might need. NEWS ROUND-UP Wave of Interest in Department’s Work T he after-effects of the Indian Ocean tsunami are continuing to ripple through the Department of Earth Sciences which, as the only science department in Hong Kong with an expertise in this area, has been called upon to answer the many concerns that were churned up by the event. The government’s Security Bureau has sought the Department’s input on the risk of a major tsunami hitting Hong Kong, and thousands of people, mainly school children, have attended talks by Earth Sciences academics, far exceeding expectations. Scholars are also working with seismology experts on the Mainland to investigate the possibility of a tsunami warning system for the South China Sea and to explore and establ ish col laborat ive research programmes. Meetings have been held with the Hainan and Guangdong Seismological Bureaus, and the Seismological Bureau of the Central Government. A devastating tsunami is believed to have last occurred along the South China coast in the early 1780s, killing about 40,000 people, but there is a scarcity of information about other such events. The department is keen to develop research in this area, according to Dr Chan Lung Sang, who, wi th Dr Jason Al i both Lecturers in the 2003 GEBCO chart Department and Professor Jonathon Aitchison, Head of the Department are at the forefront of efforts to provide tsunami-related information. “This research will not be easy because the literature doesn’t separate tsunami events from tidal surges caused by typhoons or heavy storms. But if we can have an accurate record of previous events, we can do a reasonable assessment of the tsunami risk,” Dr Chan said. Earthquakes can trigger tsunamis and Dr Ali pointed out that the nearby Manila Trench, which runs along the Western Philippines, has a simi lar tectonic conf igurat ion to Sumatra, the epicentre of the earthquake that set off the Indian Ocean tsunami. Combining information about past tsunamis and what is known about earthquake occurrence will help the scientists determine the risks. In the meantime, the Department’s academics have also been busy dealing with requests for more information about tsunamis from the media and the public. A public talk at the Rayson Huang Theatre originally intended for 300 people pulled in more than 1,200 and required satellite links to lecture rooms to accommodate the audience. Large numbers also attended talks given at Hong Kong’s Science Museum, Central Library and more than a dozen secondary schools. Dr Ali said this has all been good for the Department and the University. “What’s been really interesting is that we’re being seen by the public, the media and the government as a focal point for ‘hard’ information,” he added. ASIAN TSUNAMI