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Banda Aceh. Local wisdom was more effective in warning of impending natural disasters than technology-based systems, a symposium was told here on Tuesday.

This was shown by residents of Aceh’s Simeuleu Island during the devastating earthquake and resulting tsunami at the end of 2004, Aceh Regional Secretary Husni Bahri said.

The symposium participants were told that few Simeulueans died or were injured in the disaster because they had fled to higher regions of the island when the 8.9-magnitude earthquake hit.

Without any technological help, the residents fled to higher ground because they knew a tsunami could follow the quake ahead of any evidence of one.

“The development of a community-based early-warning system is more effective in reducing the number of casualties, but the government has so far only thought to provide a technology-based early warning system,” Husni said

The symposium on developing community-based early-warning systems was convened by the Indonesian Red Cross (PMI) in collaboration with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), the Canadian Red Cross and the American Red Cross.

Husni said the government of Aceh was highly supportive of community-based early warning systems as an important part of disaster management.

The government, he said, had a technology-based early warning system — the Tsunami Early Warning System, which was developed to calculate the potential for tsunamis.

“On the other hand, indigenous communities have their local wisdom for predicting a disaster in time to mobilize the people,” he said.

The chairman of Aceh’s PMI branch, Farid W. Ali, said the community was an important element in the development of disaster early warning systems.

“That’s why PMI’s vigilance and risk-reduction programs in various parts of the country will seek to empower the community to independently manage their early warning systems,” Farid said.

Acehnese needed to re-establish their local wisdom in disaster prediction. “Local wisdom is valuable for early disaster management, such as the concept of ‘Smong’ in Simeulue [local dialect], which signals an impending tsunami,” he said.

During the 2004 earthquake and tsunami that killed more 170,000 people, not many Simeulueans fell victim to the disaster, because they quickly fled to higher ground after the quake.

Smong, a local custom that has been passed on from generation to generation, began after a great wave that hit the island in the 19th century.

Since then, the people of Simeulue have fled to the mountains whenever a strong earthquake rocked their island.

“The 2004 tsunami has made us realize and remember the local knowledge that once was alive in the community,” Farid said, adding that PMI would attempt to adopt all local Acehnese traditions and combine them with government-supplied technology.

Technology, he said, had its uses in times of an earthquake such as when the government, through the Meteorology and Geophysics Agency, distributed information on the magnitude of an earthquake via television, radio and cellphones.

People who received the information could then immediately warn others using traditional methods such as hitting the bedug (large wooden drum) at the mosques, or kentongan (a percussion instrument made from hollow wood or bamboo) or azan (the Muslim call to prayer).

It is hoped that the symposium would result in a permanent procedure for a community-based early warning system to be implemented from the central government downward.

The next step would be to introduce this system to the public, followed by an overall trial, Farid said.