Questioning The Safe Limit On The Location Of The Cheap Gud Explosion With Residents' Settlements

TNI members examined Cluster Visalia, housing in Cibubur Tourism City, Bogor Regency which was affected by the explosion of the cheap Guddam Kodam Jaya, Saturday (30/3/2024). (Between/M Fikri Setiawan/pri)

JAKARTA The explosion of the Regional Munition Warehouse (Gud cheap) Kodam Jaya left trauma for the community, especially children, who live not far from the location. However, Pangdam Jaya Major General TNI Mohamad Hasan confirmed that around the location of the warehouse that exploded was safe.

The explosion of Gud cheap Paldam Jaya in Ciangsana Village, Gunung Putri District, Bogor Regency, Saturday (30/3/2024) shocked local residents. Moreover, the series of explosions in the ammunition warehouse occurred during breaking the fast.

Hasan said the explosion was expected to occur on Saturday at around 18.05. After being traced, the explosion came from the ammunition warehouse number 6 which originally appeared to emit smoke.

After these findings, the officers in the warehouse immediately informed local residents to be vigilant and evacuate.

Furthermore, Hasan said the ammunition stored in warehouse number 6 contained ammunition that had expired at the age of more than 10 years.

"The ammunitions that have expired have returned from various units served throughout the Kodam area in Jakarta and we have 160,000 types and explosives," Hasan said.

The fire was extinguished on Sunday (31/3) morning and Hasan appealed to all people around the location to be calm and not to worry. There were no casualties in the explosion.

This cheap Gud explosion incident is in the spotlight. Moreover, according to residents' confessions, a number of projectiles were bounced from the scene. Not only that, residents also admitted that this incident caused trauma.

One of the affected residential areas is Cluster Visalia, Cibubur Tourism City. Secretary of the Visalia Cluster Management, Aldi Setiadi, told the impact of the explosion on their children.

"The explosion caused psychological trauma to our children. Most of the children, yes, based on chat (with their parents), they could not sleep, were traumatized," said Aldi, quoted by Antara.

The children were hysterical when there was flames and puffs of smoke and the sound of successive explosions. For this reason, Aldi asked for special treatment to deal with the impact of trauma on children.

Regarding the existence of a bullet warehouse around the residential location, Aldi emphasized that residents did not know that the Visalia housing they were living in was close to the cheap Gud.

"We ask for a coordination bureaucracy between institutions related to the developer Visalia where when we want to live in this place, we are not told of any bullet warehouses around where we live," Aldi explained.

Meanwhile, Acting Governor of West Java Bey Machmudin said there were 135 families who had to be evacuated due to the explosion and fire at the Kodam Jaya cheap Gud. He detailed that as many as 85 families were evacuated at the village office, and 50 other families were evacuated at mosque places of worship around the Bogor Tourism City Housing.

The vibrations of the explosion also caused damage to at least 31 residents' houses. Broken glasses, perforated roofs, damaged windows and doors, cracked walls, and ceilings that threaten the safety of residents.

TNI Commander General Agus Subiyanto said the presence of the warehousing had complied with the ammunition storage security procedures. Cheap Gud is indeed a place for collecting bullets, grenades, and other damaged ammunition or those that expired before being destroyed.

Agus said, 16 warehouses in the cheap Gud complex were designed by ensuring the safety of ammunition storage, ranging from underground bunkers to ditches or embankments to minimize the impact in the event of an explosion.

However, the distance from the ammunition warehouse complex that was established in 1982 with residential areas was no longer ideal. Initially, the warehouse complex was up to 5 km away, but now it is less than 500 meters due to the rapid construction of settlements around the location. For information, Cibubur Tourism City, one of the affected residential areas, is known to have begun to be developed in 1997.

That means there are two possibilities related to the provisions of the safe distance between the location of the ammunition building and residential areas. The first possibility is that there is no provision that the distance is safe or second there is a safe distance but it is violated by the housing development party.

This of course should be a concern in the future so that stakeholders pay more attention to the safety of residents, stop being wary and don't wait for victims to fall.