2023-09-25 05:45:16
2023-09-25 relive-after-the-catastrophe-indonesia
As high as a three-story building, the stranded ship in the center of the city of Banda Aceh, on the northern tip of the large Indonesian island of Sumatra, is a tourist attraction in its own right: families with children climb the staircase in iron along its hull then take a photo of themselves on a footbridge. From the roof, we dominate this flat city where the domes of the mosques shine, while the cone of a dormant volcano stands out on the horizon to the east. The sea is not visible, and for good reason. L’Float 1 was a 2,600-ton floating diesel power plant moored in the port of this provincial capital, when the tsunami of December 26, 2004 transported it 5 kilometers inland. The huge flat-bottomed barge will leave several flattened houses in its wake. Its rusty silhouette looked a little sinister for a long time, before the authorities developed it into a real memorial park, with souvenir shops and pretty flower boxes, around ten years ago.
Inside the Aceh Tsunami Museum (Indonesia), in Banda Aceh, June 1, 2023. The four-story high building also serves as an education center and emergency shelter in the event of an alert. ATIKAH ZATA AMANI FOR “THE WORLD”
Not far from there, a tsunami museum, installed in a curvy architectural design reminiscent of the wave, recounts, in photos and film, the tragedy. In another neighborhood, a small trawler left perched on the roof of a house, the only one among dozens of others cleared since, has been transformed into a memorial. These are, with theFloat 1, the rare visible signs immediately associated in Banda Aceh with this cataclysm which, almost nineteen years ago, claimed 78,400 victims among the city’s 269,000 inhabitants. That’s almost one in three inhabitants. By adding the surrounding countryside, the islands and the coast of the province, the death toll for Indonesia reaches 167,000 deaths. The tsunami caused around 60,000 additional deaths, mostly along the Thai, Sri Lankan and Indian coasts.
The vast Indonesian archipelago occupies a perilous place on the Pacific Ring of Fire, this alignment of volcanoes with intense seismic activity, which stretches from New Zealand to southern Chile. However, nothing prepared us for this assessment of biblical proportions. The long western coast of Aceh province, excluding the capital, recorded 88,600 missing people.
Conversely, the island of Simeulue, very close to the epicenter and populated by 70,000 inhabitants, only had seven victims: this is because, since a tsunami killed half of the population in 1907, the islanders transmit to their children, in the nursery rhymes they sing to them, the dangerousness of the “smong”. If one day they see the sea receding after an earthquake, they must escape as high as possible into the mountains, says the song. Word « smoke »from the indigenous dialect, has since been incorporated into the Indonesian dictionary.
You have 86.56% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.
#Peace #unexpected #legacy #tsunami #Indonesia #twenty #years