When tragedy strikes, it is often discussed as a single, horrific event. An earthquake hits, and the ground rumbles and shakes. Homes, offices, and other buildings collapse. Roads cleave open. People perish, while some escape with their lives.

Once the incident is over, it is considered finished. The danger ebbs and turns instead to rescue and recovery. Communities are razed, and then rebuilt.

In reality, however, the mess of disaster is rarely so clear-cut. Once the immediate danger subsides, myriad secondary tragedies spawn from the one initial flashpoint and can be just as, if not more, deadly.

At the end of November, the Indonesian island of Sumatra was devastated by torrential rainfall, which brought with it terrifying mudslides and floods that washed away villages, buried communities, and cut off access to towns and cities.

Over 900 people died and 1 million were evacuated. More than three million people are thought to have been affected and, several weeks later, hundreds are still listed as missing.

While the initial threat and monsoonal rains may have passed, the secondary threats remain and have begun to take hold. Residents may have survived the onslaught of raging waters and churning mud, but many are now homeless, injured, sick, and running out of food and water.

“Suffering through days without clean water or proper medical care, evacuees packed into emergency........

© The Diplomat