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How life goes on after an earthquake: The ‘Lego schools’ of Lombok

On the Indonesian island, school classrooms built from earthquake-proof, recycled plastic get kids back to school.

The shallow inland earthquake that hit the northwest of the island on August 5, 2018, was the strongest ever recorded on Lombok, killing 560 people and damaging or destroying nearly all structures in the rural region that is a two-hour drive through forested mountain passes from the main town of Mataram in the south. Azra (right) sits beside her classmate, Azril, 13, outside a classroom at Tanjung Junior High School, Lombok [Louise Hunt/Al Jazeera]In the villages along the coastal road, simple homes have since been rebuilt and life around the lean-to shops and warungs (kiosks or small eateries) selling fried chicken and rice appears to have returned to normal. In tests by civil engineers at the University of California, the honeycomb-shaped modules behaved with more flexibility than conventional materials and are 100 times lighter than reinforced concrete, which is expected to minimise the risk of injury in the event of an earthquake.

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