Monitoring of Anak Krakatau volcano activity at the Pasauran Observation Post on Tuesday Sept. 8. (BNPB)
On August 23, the head of Indonesia’s National Disaster Management Agency (BNPB), Suharyanto, was in Maumere, East Nusa Tenggara, inspecting the national logistics post for the deadly Flores earthquake. Yet part of the operational update he gave that day concerned a crisis more than 1,000 kilometres away. Thirty helicopters were being prepared for forest and land fire operations across Kalimantan, alongside weather-modification, water-bombing and ground-firefighting teams. In West Kalimantan alone, four aircraft dropped more than one million litres of water that day.
Less than two weeks later, another file landed on the national disaster system’s desk. Anak Krakatau volcano entered its strongest eruptive phase since activity intensified in July, sending ash approximately 15 kilometres into the atmosphere and disrupting aviation across parts of Java, Sumatra and beyond. By September 8, more than 340,000 passengers had been affected and roughly 3,000 flights cancelled, delayed or diverted, according to Transport Ministry figures. No deaths had been reported, and the volcano remained at Level III rather than the highest Level IV alert.
None of these disasters was connected, but they took place almost simultaneously.
Indonesia’s disaster-management challenge is rarely a neat sequence in which one emergency ends before another begins. The country sits across multiple active seismic and volcanic systems while seasonal hazards such as forest fires run on their own timetable. Through the second half of August, recovery from one of Indonesia’s most destructive earthquakes of the year, a large fire-suppression campaign in Kalimantan, and from early September, an aviation crisis around Anak Krakatau all had to be managed by Indonesia’s national disaster system at the same time. There is no evidence any one of them slowed another; the demand on Indonesia’s disaster system was cumulative, not competitive.
The August 15 Flores earthquake illustrates both the strength and the limits of that system. The magnitude 7.7 quake killed at least 111 people and injured 1,678, according to the latest BNPB-sourced figures available by August 28. Nearly 78,000 homes were damaged, including more than 24,500 severely, and the quake affected 1,378 schools and 237 health facilities. Some 566,797 electricity customers were affected, while 812 communications sites were temporarily knocked offline.
Indonesia’s initial mobilisation was fast. Indonesia’s meteorology agency (BMKG) issued a tsunami warning just over two minutes after the earthquake. BNPB coordinated large-scale logistics deliveries, while the military, police, search-and-rescue (SAR) services and public works authorities deployed personnel, aircraft, medical facilities and infrastructure support—more than 1,200 military personnel and 260 police personnel in all—alongside hundreds of tonnes of airlifted aid. Yet rapid mobilisation did not translate evenly into rapid relief. Suharyanto himself publicly acknowledged shortcomings in aid distribution on August 21, including shortages of clean water and electricity at some evacuation sites. Communities on Palue Island, including Nitung Village, received assistance later than more accessible areas, as damaged transport links, power outages and difficult geography slowed the movement of supplies and patients.
That unevenness has continued into recovery, which has been running in parallel with the response rather than waiting for it to finish. A preliminary Damage and Loss Assessment by the National Zakat Agency (Baznas), compiled within days of the quake, put losses at around 2.2 trillion Indonesian rupiah (125.7 million US dollar). No comparable government damage-and-loss figure had surfaced in the sources reviewed by September 8. Meanwhile the Association of Indonesian Regency Governments (Apkasi) was already urging the central government to accelerate regional funding for affected areas, warning that local fiscal conditions could slow reconstruction. Finance Ministry officials said on September 8 that BNPB had roughly 950 billion Indonesian rupiah (54.2 million US dollar) left in Ready-to-Use disaster funds from an initial 2026 allocation of 4.62 trillion Indonesian rupiah (263.9 million US dollar), and was preparing a request for a further 5.67 trillion Indonesian rupiah (323.9 million US dollar). A separate 5 trillion Indonesian rupiah (285.6 million US dollar) Disaster Reserve Fund had also been confirmed ready three weeks earlier.
None of this means Indonesia lacks a reconstruction system, or that the Kalimantan fires or Anak Krakatau slowed the Flores response. The sources reviewed showed no evidence that aircraft, personnel or budget lines were diverted from one disaster to another; BNPB attributed distribution problems primarily to geography and transport limitations, not competing emergencies. What the overlap does show is less dramatic and more durable: costing, financing and distributing recovery is slower and less visible work than the initial response, and it has to proceed even as the same agencies turn to the next hazard.
Kalimantan’s fires make that especially visible. Forest and land fire operations across six priority provinces continued through the same period, involving dozens of helicopters, weather-modification sorties and thousands of ground personnel. Anak Krakatau then required a different response again—volcanic monitoring, exclusion zones and airport closures rather than mass evacuation or physical reconstruction. Indonesia was not managing one disaster crisis but several kinds of risk at once, each at a different stage: response in one place, suppression in another, monitoring elsewhere, and reconstruction where the headlines had already moved on.
Three developments will show how well that system manages the transition. The first is whether BNPB or another government agency issues a comprehensive damage-and-loss assessment for Flores and turns it into clear reconstruction financing. The second is whether the funding Apkasi has requested is resolved quickly enough to sustain rebuilding. The third is whether Anak Krakatau’s alert level changes as Kalimantan’s fire season passes its expected August–September peak—a genuine escalation on either front would add another live demand to a system already managing several hazards at once.
Indonesia has shown repeatedly that it can mobilise when disaster strikes. Its longer test is whether recovery can keep moving while the next emergency is already demanding attention.
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