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Tsunami Museum To Rise In Indonesia

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The Associated Press

Published: September 2, 2007

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia - Indonesia will build a $7.5 million tsunami museum in Aceh province to commemorate the 230,000 people who died when towering waves crashed into Asian coastlines nearly three years ago.

Architect Ridwan Kamil won a contest to design the museum, which will look like a traditional wooden house on stilts, said competition judge Kamal Arief. Names of the victims will be inscribed on the wall inside a towering chimneylike installation, said Arief, also a local architect.

The museum will be built atop a hill in the provincial capital Banda Aceh, the area hardest hit in the Dec. 26, 2004, tsunami.

Many residents fled to the hill during the 2004 tsunami, and Arief said it will be used as an evacuation point if there is another tsunami.

The museum will display the culture and history of Aceh people, including information on three decades of fighting between Indonesian troops and separatist rebels that only ended after the tsunami killed 167,000 people in the province and left a half-million others homeless.

The museum will also feature scientific descriptions and simulations showing the process of earthquakes and a tsunami, and will show images of Aceh before and after the disaster.

Indonesia is located in the so-called Pacific 'Ring of Fire,' an arc of volcanos and fault lines encircling the Pacific Basin. Earthquakes, which can trigger a tsunami, are common in the area.

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