When Disasters Hit a Trip Site, Should You Stay Home?

For months, you’ve been planning that trip to Indonesia. Then you hear about the massive brush fires on Borneo and Sumatra, the great clouds of unhealthy air throughout the region. Then there’s the Garuda Indonesia jet that crashed Sept. 26 amid thick Sumatran haze. And the cargo ship and oil tanker that collided on the same day between Sumatra and Malaysia. And the Sept. 28 earthquake on Sulawesi Island that killed at least 16 people and did nearly $2 billion in damage.

Sounds bad. But Indonesia is an enormous country, and your reservations are in Bali, 1,700 miles southeast of Medan, the smoky Sumatran city where the plane crashed. Besides, your reservations are for late October. Cancel? Stay the course?

Bali has been unaffected by the fires, State Department officials and tour operators agree, and unless you were intending to venture from there into certain parts of Sulawesi or the scorched Kalimantan area (on the island of Borneo), there’s no reason to change plans.

But what about the next time, and the next location? When such crises hit, whether they’re forest fires, tropical storms, droughts or even crime waves, would-be travelers are stuck in an awkward position. You need information--information more specific than most U.S. newspapers, magazines or newscasts, aimed at broad audiences, are able to give. And with American travelers choosing their vacations from a global selection of destinations, there always seems to be someplace in peril. When such doubts arise, whom do you call?

Call your hotel (directly, not via its centralized 800 line). But as long as it hasn’t actually closed down, its employees have an economic interest in reassuring you, no matter what the situation on the ground. Maybe they’ll tell you all they know; maybe they’ll be selective. (If you’re really suspicious, try the bar or gift shop first, then the front desk.)

Call your tour operator or cruise line. But keep in mind that these companies stand to lose money if too many travelers cancel. Again, someone may be tempted to paint you a rosy picture. To discourage that, be sure to ask for the source’s name and title along with the information. Depending on circumstances, you also may want to ask about refund or rerouting options.

Call your airline. But the representatives there can probably only tell you if flights have been canceled or delayed, or if your airport is closed.

Call a government tourist office. But yet again, remember that though they’re government operations, those offices are basically in the business of promoting their homelands. Every tropical storm in the Americas in recent years, no matter how severe or mild, seems to have been followed by a blizzard of upbeat press releases in this newspaper office, each offering reassurances that it’s “business as usual” at the destination in question. Sometimes it is, sometimes not. Also, if the crisis has affected communications, a foreign government tourism office’s workers may be just as starved for good information as you are.

All those sources may be helpful, but if you’re really worried, don’t stop there. Here are a few more alternatives.

The U.S. Department of State (telephone [202] 647-5225, Web site https://travel.state.gov/travel_warnings.html) and the federal Centers for Disease Control (tel. [404] 639-2572, Web site https://www.cdc.gov/travel/travel.html) each offer information by phone recording, Internet site and fax. The State Department usually worries more about political stability than weather, and the CDC worries more about inoculations and contagions than fires or floods, but each can be helpful. For instance, on Sept. 24, State Department officials posted an advisory for travelers to Indonesia, pointing out that Jakarta and Bali “have not been affected by the fires.” Even when information isn’t that specific, the State Department’s consular information sheets are good preparation for unfamiliar territory. And State Department officials say that in certain instances where prepared information doesn’t cover a specific question, a State Department representative may be able to provide answers.

The Internet is full of bad information and sites that promise more than they deliver--but its usefulness as a timely global resource grows daily. If currency is fluctuating wildly, you can check exchange rates daily at https://www.olsen.ch/cgi-bin. For a map that may go into more detail than your atlas, you can try https://www.mapquest.com. For worldwide up-to-the-hour weather reports and satellite photos, there is https://cirrus.sprl.umich.edu/wxnet/, a directory that leads to various meteorological sources. For a broader directory of travel-related sources, you can use one of the leading “search engines” such as Yahoo, or try the more narrowly focused https://www.netguide.com/travel.

Another Internet trove of fresh, relatively untainted information is www.newslink.org, a site that claims links to the content of more than 3,600 newspapers worldwide, plus magazines and some other sources. When I tried to search Indonesian papers, I found several links that led nowhere, and a few that were no use to an English-speaker. But in the Indonesia Times (an English language paper), I found articles arguing that plantation owners were to blame for the fires, summaries of weather conditions and further reports that Bali was unaffected. Even if you have no reason to doubt that your destination is paradisiacally calm, it can’t hurt to give the local paper a little perusal.

Reynolds travels anonymously at the newspaper’s expense, accepting no special discounts or subsidized trips. He welcomes comments and suggestions, but cannot respond individually to letters and calls. Write Travel Insider, Los Angeles Times, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles 90053 or e-mail chris.reynolds@latimes.com.