Many participants sobbed as they remembered the victims of the 7.5-magnitude earthquake and subsequent flood that leveled large parts of the coastal city on Sulawesi last September.
According to the Red Cross, about 4,300 people were reported dead or missing, and nearly 60,000 individuals are still living in makeshift housing after their homes were destroyed.
The force of the impact left entire neighborhoods flattened by liquefaction, a process wherein the earth begins to behave like a liquid and absorbs it like quicksand.
It also destroyed fishing boats, shops and irrigation systems, depriving residents of their income.
Reconstruction has been slow, and lots of people still in temporary shelters wonder if they may ever have a house again.
“I have been living in this tent since the earthquake,” said Ela, a mother of 4.
“It was really difficult. My children got sick, it’s hot and sometimes after rain we’ve to sleep on wet ground. The kid’s father still works, but we cannot afford to purchase mattresses, she added.
Nani, one other mother of 4, said her home was destroyed within the disaster.
“I do not know if I’ll give you the option to get a everlasting apartment,” she added.
Hundreds of damaged schools across the region haven’t been repaired.
Many of them “are so severely affected that they continue to be too unsafe to make use of, forcing children to learn in temporary classrooms where they have to take turns learning on account of lack of space,” Save the Children said on Saturday.
Indonesia is one of the disaster-prone countries on Earth on account of its location on the sting of the so-called Ring of Fire within the Pacific, where tectonic plates collide.
The Southeast Asian archipelago can also be dotted with greater than 100 volcanoes, including one which erupted between Java and Sumatra in late 2018 and triggered a tsunami that killed greater than 400 people.
On Boxing Day 2004, a magnitude 9.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Sumatra, triggering a tsunami that killed 220,000 people across the Indian Ocean region, including roughly 170,000 in Indonesia.
This article appeared within the print edition of the South China Morning Post as: Indonesia commemorates the day the Palu disaster occurred
