The design competition for a Memorial to the victims of the tsunami, promoted by the Thai government, offers an opportunity to take stock of the reconstruction along the coasts hit by the sea quake. Photography and texts by Stefano Boeri.
 
Competition
In September, the Thai Minister for Culture, along with the Council of Architects, decided to launch an international design competition for building a Memorial dedicated to the victims of the tsunami (www.tsunamumemorial.or.th). The competition, organised in two stages, has involved 379 design groups from 43 different countries. For the first stage, concluded 15 December, the jury has shortlisted five groups who will present their final designs on 2 May.

Ghosts
With a ceremony involving a group of Buddhist monks, called on to drive away the ghosts of the tourists and workers that were lost last year, a few weeks ago one of the major tourist resorts was reopened on the coast of Khao Lak. Where it was, like it was.

Removal and tourism
The Thai coast of the Andaman Sea has been rebuilt with unforeseen rapidity and without much attention to the risk of tsunami. The major tourist resorts have been faithfully rebuilt according to their original position and structure. The houses in the fishing villages and those of the street vendors – swept away by three waves on 26 December – have been replaced by thousands of small prefabbricated buildings (mostly financed by ONG and with international cooperation).

Memorial
At Khao Lak, every day hundreds of tourists visit the naval embarkation pushed by the tsunami waves onto the side of the principal coastal road that runs about three kilometres from the beach.

The Memorial in the park
The Khao Lak National Park, the peninsula chosen for constructing the Memorial, is in the province of Phang Nga (a few kilometres away from the island of Pukhet), one of the places worst hit – 4,225 dead and 1,655 missing – by last December’s disaster. The slope of the two hills embracing the beach is thought to guarantee protection for the Memorial from the risk of new tsunamis.

Still?
Since 26 December 2004, right up to today, there have been more than 3,000 earthquakes along the fault line between the two plates – continental and peninsular – that runs from Sumatra to the centre of the Indian Ocean. Out of these, almost 500 have been close to magnitude 5, the size associated to the highest risk of tsunami.

26.12.2004 Like a deep crack that opens in an iceberg, the underwater fault line, that formed at a depth of around 30 kilometres below the Sumatra in ten seconds ran along 1,400 kilometres of sea bed, provoking three successive tsunami waves that wrecked the coasts of Indonesia, India right up to the distant East African coast.

DIY
In a large room on the outskirts of Bangkok, a dozen young technicians follow the state of telluric movements 24 hours a day, calculating the distance from the coasts and the approach time of nearing of the waves. The idea of a single transnational control station fell apart – paradoxically – due to the excessive sensitivity of the underwater sensors, able to pick up every little movement from the military carriers in the Andaman Sea.

Vibration
The tsunami starts with an imperceptible vibration that runs for miles until it hits the coast; here, depending on the slope of the coastal sea bed, it is transformed into a wave of variable height. The damnation of the Thai coast (where the seabed slopes gradually) and the saving of the Maldives, which are instead like little pointed hilltops emerging from the ocean, was all to do with this.

Wireless and sirens
The alarm systems are a mixture of state of the art technology and word of mouth. When a quake close to magnitude 5 is registered, 5,000 text messages are sent automatically to warn the major central and local government institutions, emergency centres and the network of tourist resorts. If confirmed, the alarm is repeated along with instructions for evacuting the coasts with a second wave of text messages, emails, faxes and live announcements on television and radio. The final warning is set off by 120 alarm towers (steel scaffolding with loudspeakers) that the government is having built along the coast and in the villages.

Plodprasop Suraswadi
Vice-minister for the environment and natural resources in Thailand, executive director of the National Disaster Warning Center. He receives the first indications of underwater telluric movements. He is responsible for deciding in a matter of minutes whether to give the alarm or not, whether to wait for more exact information or decide to evacuate the coastal areas.

Thanks to: National Disaster Warning Center Thailand, the Competition Organizing Committee for the Tsunami Memorial Project, the Council of Architects Thailand, the Ministry of Culture, the Office for Contemporary Arts and Culture for the data, information and support