Indonesia this week suffered an earthquake measuring 6.0 on the Richter Scale near the southern island of Flores. And while there were neither immediate tsunami alerts nor reports of casualties — the fact that it came just four days after the quake on Sulawesi island places the Southeast Asian nation in an even more precarious situation. Last Friday’s devastation, with a magnitude of 7.5, left 1,350 dead and some 200,000 displaced; prompting Jakarta to announce a national disaster. President Joko Widodo has called on the international community for urgent emergency relief. The immediate priority remains clearing infrastructure to allow aid to reach where it is supposed to. Yet according to survivors on the ground there has been little evidence of government assistance. Indeed, some of the dead were this week given mass burials. Reporters covering the calamity note how the scale of destruction is impeding rescue workers as they try to access stricken areas. This has naturally prompted fears of an increased death toll. Oxfam says it could take weeks to ascertain the full extent of the tragedy. The last time that Indonesia declared a national disaster was back in 2004 when the 9-magnitue Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami struck northern Sumatra; particularly in Aceh province. The authorities estimated that an overwhelming 200,000 died there alone. Even as the latter hit a total of 14 countries with an overall body count of 225,000. The country is home to 452 volcanoes and experiences 90 percent of the world’s earthquakes. Indeed, it sits on the Ring of Fire; which endures 81 percent of the largest quakes each and every year. That being said, being well-versed in the need for ongoing risk assessment cannot, sadly, translate into foolproof pre-emptive or, indeed, remedial measures. All of which serves to contrast starkly with man-made wars that bring with them equal ruination in terms of lives needlessly lost. This is not to mention crumbling infrastructure that impacts access to basic amenities such as water and electricity; which, in turn, gives way to the spread of diseases such as cholera. One only has to look at how Yemen, ravaged by three years of warfare, is suffering what the UN has termed the worst humanitarian disaster in modern times. Or the plight of the people Syria, Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan. It remains regrettable that an overwhelming majority of human suffering comes not from Mother Nature but from man. * Published in Daily Times, October 3rd 2018.