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Resilience: response, recovery and ethnicity in post-disaster processes
2
The Melanesian and Gilbertese people on Ghizo live in largely segregated communities: there is little intermarriage,
and they predominately live in different villages. When arriving in Ghizo, the Gilbertese migrants settled along the
coastline; easy access to the ocean was desired as ocean-based resources are their main means of providing food
without the interference of economic transactions. Ghizo’s Melanesian Solomon Islanders have long practiced
gardening on a medium to large scale, in addition to relying on the ocean’s resources. Their gardens, usually situated
further inland on the islands’ hills, are home to a large variety of fruits and vegetables. The gardens’ produce and
edible wild foods provided by Ghizo’s tropical rainforest constitute a large part of the Melanesian Solomon Islanders’
daily diet. In combination with fishing and harvesting seafood, these are their main means of direct food provision.
On April 2, 2007, at 07:39 AM local time (April 1 2007, 20:39 UTC), the morning rituals of Ghizo’s islanders were
disturbed by a submarine magnitude 8.1 earthquake. This earthquake occurred along a fault on the Pacific plate,
close to the intersection of three plates (Pacific, Australian, and Woodlark) (see Figure 1). Despite on-going seismic
activity, this was the first earthquake larger than M 7.0 to hit the area since the early 20th Century (SOPAC 2008).
The most severe shaking was felt on Ghizo and surrounding islands as they were located closest to the earthquake’s
epicentre at 45 kilometres south-south-east of Ghizo Island (USGS 2007). However, it was not the earthquake that
did the most damage, but the following tsunami waves that reached Ghizo and neighbouring islands within five
minutes after the earthquake, roughly ten minutes before an official tsunami warning was issued by the Pacific
Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii at 20:55 UTC (NOAA n.d., NOAA 2007). The tsunami caused significant damage
and loss of life on Ghizo. Of the 33 casualties on Ghizo, 31 were inhabitants of Gilbertese villages (McAdoo 2009).
Figure 1
Tectonic plates and plate boundaries near the Solomon Islands. The Solomon Sea plate, the Woodlark plate, and the Australian
plate are currently subducting below the Pacific plate at the destructive plate boundary, south-west of the Solomon Islands. The red
dot indicates the epicentre of the 2007 earthquake, the orange circle, the location of Ghizo Island. The inset shows where the country is
located; the smaller rectangle indicates the area presented at this map. Source: USGS 2007.