Just after 7:30am on the morning of Monday, April 2, 2007, an earthquake measuring 8.1 struck 45 km off the coast of Ghizo Island, in the Western Province of the Solomon Islands. Fifteen minutes later, a localised tsunami destroyed more than 500 houses on coastal land around Western and Choiseul Provinces and damaged many more. Fifty-two people were killed and thousands left homeless.

Solomon Islanders had experienced plenty of earthquakes before – the islands straddle the Pacific, Australia, Woodlark and Solomon Sea plates and experience high levels of earthquake activity. However the April 2007 quake was the strongest the region had experienced in many years.

Help came quickly – many New Zealand and Australian non-government organisations had staff already working in the Solomons, mostly helping to rebuild the country’s infrastructure following the six years of civil war from 1998-2003. Gizo township quickly became the base and distribution centre for the NGOs’ coordinated relief response.

Aid worker remembers
New Zealander Stephen Harries is World Vision’s Country Programme Manager in the Solomon Islands. He is based in Honiara but was in New Zealand on annual leave when the earthquake struck. As he drove towards his family’s beach house, in the back of his mind he knew, if the earthquake was as bad as he feared, he would have to turn around and head back to the Solomons.

“I turned around and got the first flight back. Before I knew it I was sitting in the boat on the way out to the island of Ranongga, wondering what we were going to find. We had some idea of the damage from an aerial survey of the area, but there was a lot that was unknown.”

Stephen ended up spending a month based in Gizo, coordinating World Vision’s emergency response, which focused on the islands of Ranongga and Simbo. The neighbouring islands are on two different plates; their movement during the quake thrust Ranongga three metres out of the sea, exposing 70m of coral reef in places, while Simbo descended slightly below the waves.

“As we approached Ranongga, I was struck by the smell,” says Stephen. “The exposed reef and its sealife were dying and the smell of death was everywhere.

“The people on Ranongga were so afraid. They didn’t understand that the land had been pushed upwards – they thought that the sea had gone down, and that it would come back, perhaps as another tidal surge. They wanted to know what the sea would do. How high would it come?”

As well as distributing essential supplies such as water, tarpaulins, cooking utensils chainsaws and water tanks, Stephen says communication was a key part of World Vision’s work in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake.

“We printed some key facts about the earthquake and tsunami and had them laminated. We used these as a tool to talk to the communities about what had actually happened.”

“While I was on Ranongga we had an aftershock. People just freaked out. The look in their eyes was just… the fear in their faces was intense,” says Stephen.

Talking through the facts and dispelling some of the assumptions and myths that were circulating helped to alleviate people’s fears.

Community loses battle with erosion
For one community on Ranongga, the earthquake was the last straw in what had been a long battle with the land. Mondo was a small village of leaf houses on a hill overlooking the sea. Every home was beautifully kept; landscaped pathways lined with flowers connected the houses and gardens with the school and clinic.

But over time the coastal edge of the village was eroding. Land was slowly crumbling away onto the beach below. While Mondo was not affected by the tsunami, the earthquake triggered huge landslides. That day, a woman and two boys, on the beach when the earthquake struck, were buried alive under tonnes of earth. One of the boys, 13-year-old Ipakera, was lucky – his legs were sticking out of the earth and the community were able to dig him out.

His father, Korio Newberry, described what happened that day:

“I left at 5am to go fishing. When the earthquake hit I nearly capsized and had to hang onto my canoe. I was very scared. I paddled to shore and ran through the bush – I didn’t know about the landslides. When I got back to the village, someone said the landslide had happened and Ipakera was covered up.

“When I saw my son he had been dug out and was lying here in the village. He was very shaken and finding it hard to breath. I was so happy to see him.”

As more cracks became visible in the earth, the community discussed the possibility of leaving the village they took so much pride in. After a geological survey showed the erosion was likely to continue, the Mondo people asked for World Vision’s assistance in relocating to higher, more stable ground.

“This is an incredibly motivated community,” says Stephen. “It hasn’t been easy for them to move. They have dismantled some of their buildings, including the school, carried the materials 40 minutes walk up the hill to the new site, and reassembled them,” says Stephen.

A few older community members and pregnant women who were unable to make the journey up the hill have remained at the old site. Although it’s now almost deserted, it’s easy to see how attractive the village once was, and what a difficult decision it would have been to leave it.

“In the six months since I was last in Mondo, the community has made so much progress. When they first moved there was nothing there – it was just bush,” says Stephen.

Looking to the future
At a meeting in the new church, which is almost complete, Stephen told the community how impressed he was with their progress. He spoke in Pijin, explaining that he felt the success was thanks to the hard work that all the people in Mondo had put in.

World Vision has worked in conjunction with Emergency Architects to design a prototype house appropriate for this setting and able to withstand future earthquake activity. World Vision is providing the materials people can’t get locally, such as chainsaws, nails and steel strapping. World Vision has also trained the community in how to build this new type of house. The community now plans to build one for every family.

Herrick Ragoso, the chairman of Mondo’s Disaster Committee, says shelter is by far the community’s biggest need.

“We’re very happy with the assistance New Zealand is providing. The chainsaws and fuel World Vision has given us have made a big difference. We have already cut 800 posts for the new houses.”

NZAID is helping address this need through a shelter project covering much of Western Province, which is receiving $1.5 million over two years. NZAID and World Vision are working together to supply the materials, equipment and training where necessary.

“This project is quite special in terms of the level of community involvement. We have asked each community to tell us what materials they already have and what materials they still need to build housing appropriate to the areas they live in,” says Stephen.

“It’s not about World Vision building houses for people. Solomon Islanders have the skills to build the houses they need. We just facilitate the process, make sure they’ve got the materials and provide training in how to brace their houses against future earthquakes.”

The Solomon Islands is the third-largest archipelago in the South Pacific, made up of more than 900 islands scattered across 1.35 million sq km of sea to the east of Papua New Guinea and north of Vanuatu. The Commonwealth nation has a population of around 552,000.

World Vision has several projects in the Solomon Islands working in areas such as water and sanitation, food security, literacy, peacebuilding and HIV and AIDS. The shelter project in Western Province will be one of World Vision’s biggest projects in the Pacific.