Indonesia was a country of 17,000 islands, perched on the "Ring of Fire" at the edge of the Pacific, with 127 active volcanoes. They could erupt at any time, and the same sliding plates unleashed earthquakes, landslides and tsunamis, adding up to more than 2,300 emergencies a year. As his job went on, the tally got worse: 2018 was the deadliest for natural disasters in over a decade, with more than 4,600 people killed.

(That might seem silly, but he liked to pose in them himself, smiling a bit self-consciously; it all helped to show school children, in particular, what being caught up in a disaster was like.) He shrugged off the occasional government grumble about being "too naughty". After all, before he took the job he had already publicised the fact that cracks in a dam were caused by official negligence. They knew he would be a handful. Social media, though, was his trump card. Almost all Indonesians now had mobile phones. He ran seven WhatsApp groups to exchange data with monitors and journalists, who could always get "Pak Topo" when they needed him, and he used Twitter to keep the public up to speed.

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