REPORTER: Adrian Brown
Indonesia is used to calamity but there's never been anything quite like this. This mud leak in East Java is so vast it has so far swallowed a dozen villages. And the mud is still flowing.
SUSIATI (Translation): Ever since the mud, we can’t sleep, we worry what will happen to our kids, their fate. It used to be good but now it is hard.
Susiati, who has three children lives in the village of Besuki, her village was swallowed by the torrent.
SUSIATI (Translation): It’s flooded with mud and can’t be lived in, yes that is my house, how can I get past all that mud and it smells.
It all began in 2006 when the mud began erupting from the earth close to a gas drilling site. Experts remain divided on who is to blame.
REPORTER: You are in no doubt this was a natural disaster.
MOHAMMAD SOFIAN HADI, GOVERNMENT GEOLOGIST: Yes, no doubt. For me this is a natural disaster.
That view is disputed by a team of international ecologists, including Australian mud volcano expert Mark Tingay.
MARK TINGAY, VOLCANO EXPERT: Underneath that is a city that is completely buried.
He says the mud volcano is the result of a drilling accident at a nearby gas exploration site owned by Indonesian energy giant Lapindo Brantas.
MARK TINGAY: There's no theory known to science after hundreds of years of studying earthquakes by which the earthquake could have triggered a mud volcano.
But Lapindo’s Vice President, Yuniwati Teryana denies her company is responsible.
YUNIWATI TERYANA, LAPINDO, VICE PRESIDENT: We cannot accept their finding because we also have an expert here – that there’s any correlation between the drilling activate this and the mud eruption itself.
The company cites is new scientific report saying it was an earthquake more than 200km away that was to blame for the mud volcano they call Lusi. While the debate rages the spill has dictated a new lifestyle for the survivors. Many live in makeshift camps beside a now disused highway severed by the mud. And now there's more danger.
Dave, a local cafe owner is showing me what is now gurgling in his backyard.
REPORTER: So this is natural gas?
DAVE: Yes.
Highly flammable methane gas, to be precise.
REPORTER: It really smells. You can smell gas in this room.
Nearby fresh cracks point to a build-up of more gas.
REPORTER: It really smells though. How do you live with the smell?
I get used to it, he tells me unbothered by the danger of living here. If I take my lighter out now, boom.
DAVE: OK, yeah. . Natural.
Yeah. The area is now highly combustible. It's the gas that's pushing the mud to the surface from a depth of more than 3,000mts. But some survivors are making the best of these hazardous conditions. A makeshift stove captures the escaping gas. They don't know why there's now so much gas, but it's been that way ever since the mud volcano erupted. And it's been blamed for a number of recent explosions.
MARK TINGAY: There's really nowhere for a lot of people to go. The area is considered dangerous and a high risk by the management agency but these are people's homes, and people don't want to leave their homes.
In a 2009 decision that many found hard to fathom Indonesia's Supreme Court cleared the company involved, Lapindo, of responsibility. But it still ordered the company to pay compensation to the victims.
REPORTER: As always happens in Indonesia justice sides with the rich and powerful. Isn't that the truth?
YUNIWATI TERYANA: It’s not the truth, I think it is not the truth – that’s only again, their assumption.
And the assumption that anyone at Lapindo should be punished is also wrong, says the company's Vice-President, Yuniwati Teryana.
REPORTER: Has anyone at Lapindo lost their job or been reprimanded for what happened?
YUNIWATI TERYANA: No, no, we are still here, we still have our experts here.
REPORTER: So no-one has been fired?
YUNIWATI TERYANA: No. Why fire us? There is no fault. No we still exist.
Many victims are resisting Lapindo's compensation offer because it's conditional on selling their land and property to the company at a knock-down rate. But payments have stopped altogether now with the company blaming financial difficulties.
YUNIWATI TERYANA: We acknowledge about it, we acknowledge about it, because of the situation of our financial problems as well. But they should not worry about it because we still have a commitment we are going to continue to settle our payment until finish.
Environmentalists claim the company has got away with murder, and that it's executives should be put on trial.
BANGUN CATUR, ENVIRONMENTALIST: This is the largest ecological disaster that we have been facing.
REPORTER: So it's the largest ecological disaster in Indonesia, but no-one has gone to jail.
BANGUN CATUR: Yes, exactly like that, it's complicated. No-one's punished.
No-one's punished. Lapindo is owned by Aburizal Bakrie, one of Indonesia's wealthiest men. At the time of the disaster he was the government's Minister for Welfare, today he leads the Golkar Party and is seen as a future presidential candidate. In January Aburizal Bakrie's son was married in a lavish ceremony, the bill for which reportedly ran into millions of dollars. A few months later money promised to the victims began drying up.
SUSIATI (Translation): Why did Bakrie’s son have such a lavish wedding? Oh yes, Lapindo has forgotten about us.
The company says the victims should stop complaining.
YUNIWATI TERYANA: If they force us, I think it will not work, so who is going to take care of them? I think better they have to be patient and we have our commitment to continue our payments until finalised.
Lapindo claims it has so far paid more than $700 million in compensation and clean-up costs. But that is nothing compared to the real cost of the disaster estimated to be a staggering $60 million a day. But with the company now legally in the clear, the government is now shouldering those hefty costs.
MOHAMMAD SOFIAN HADI: The total area is 720 hectares.
Geologist Mohamad Soffian works for the government agency that has been tasked with containing and cleaning up the spill - A clean-up which led to some desperate measures. Like diverting watery sludge into the nearby Porong River where it's channelled out to sea creating a new ecological disaster.
No-one disputes the damage down to the ecosystem, yet Mohamad Hadi is keen to show me how the government plans to turn misfortune to financial vantage.
MOHAMMAD SOFIAN HADI: You can see the fish crawling in the top of the mud.
Here where the Porong River meets the East Java Sea the mud helped to create an 80 square hectare island.
MOHAMMAD SOFIAN HADI: We have a good dream about this, maybe some day in the future we will build a new…forest of mangroves. We will make a new spot for tourism – like fishing grounds, like sport, or skiing…. around here.
Little comfort though for the victims who are still waiting for the mud to stop flowing.
YUNIWATI TERYANA: Some say it could be 100 years, can you imagine about that? That is according to the experts, because this is a very unpredictable situation.
GEORGE NEGUS: Muddy hell. Adrian Brown, Adrian wrote a blog on our website on what it was like to see the mud let alone the people and homes it swamped.
Reporter/Camera
ADRIAN BROWN
Producer
VICTORIA STROBL
Editors
NICK O'BRIEN
WAYNE LOVE
Fixers
DIAN ESTEY
ARIE MEGA
Translations/Subtitling
ROBYN FALLICK
Original Music composed by
VICKI HANSEN
24th October 2010