Musim hujan (the rainy season) is upon us here in Jakarta. A couple of days ago there was a very heavy downpour and some gusting winds. The result for one of our local supermarkets (Alpha) was that a big advertising sign crashed down on at least two cars, crushing them completely. Fortunately, there were no people in the cars at the time.
As you can see from the photograph, the structure that came down was massive but the winds that brought it down were hardly of hurricane strength and the fact that it fell suggests very shoddy construction standards. This is the carpark that I use at least once a week and I've never once considered the possibility of the towering Alpha sign crashing down on my head.
It's rare for anything stronger than a gentle breeze to blow across Jakarta and construction standards would seem to reflect that. In the case of the Alpha sign, it was the considerable area of the sign that led to its downfall because of the equation F = P x A where F is Force, P is Pressure and A is Surface Area. The resultant force was too much for the supports holding the sign in place to handle.
If a sustained and powerful wind were ever to blow through Jakarta, the results would be catastrophic because construction standards seem to rely on the assumption that will never happen. Meanwhile, Jakarta residents can look forward to their annual flooding as gutters and waterways clogged with discarded rubbish fail to cope with the volume of water pouring into them.
The streets of Jakarta are generally clean but that is only because an army of sweepers (paid Rp200,000 or A$30 a month) keep them that way. The rubbish however, is simply swept into covered drains that wait for the annual flushing from rainwater to clear them, thus passing the problem on to the canals and waterways.
As you can see from the photograph, the structure that came down was massive but the winds that brought it down were hardly of hurricane strength and the fact that it fell suggests very shoddy construction standards. This is the carpark that I use at least once a week and I've never once considered the possibility of the towering Alpha sign crashing down on my head.
It's rare for anything stronger than a gentle breeze to blow across Jakarta and construction standards would seem to reflect that. In the case of the Alpha sign, it was the considerable area of the sign that led to its downfall because of the equation F = P x A where F is Force, P is Pressure and A is Surface Area. The resultant force was too much for the supports holding the sign in place to handle.
If a sustained and powerful wind were ever to blow through Jakarta, the results would be catastrophic because construction standards seem to rely on the assumption that will never happen. Meanwhile, Jakarta residents can look forward to their annual flooding as gutters and waterways clogged with discarded rubbish fail to cope with the volume of water pouring into them.
The streets of Jakarta are generally clean but that is only because an army of sweepers (paid Rp200,000 or A$30 a month) keep them that way. The rubbish however, is simply swept into covered drains that wait for the annual flushing from rainwater to clear them, thus passing the problem on to the canals and waterways.
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