In memory of devastation

Three years ago today, the valley below our house was ripped apart by landslides, and an overall area the size of Wales was devastated by floods and further landslides. People were crushed, impaled, smothered, drowned, washed miles downstream, lost without trace. The local authorities subsequently put the death toll over this huge area at 980, but the real figure runs into several thousands. The census completed shortly before the disaster recorded a population of 6000 for the shanty town up the valley, which was all but obliterated by massive boulders. But the mayor wouldn't admit to more than 1000 deaths in the whole town, as that would have entailed state and federal authorities taking over - and the aid and aid money would have been so much more difficult to siphon off.

Two weeks later, the earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand, took the Serra off the news, followed by the unbelievable destruction of the tsunami in Japan.

Three years on, people are gradually rebuilding their lives. Those who had the means to do so have gradually rebuilt their properties, but work hasn't even started on rehousing those who lost everything. After well over a year, the state engineering company started work on the river, and have confined it between concrete walls in the valley. There was talk of making a dam, and a nature reserve where the shanty town once stood, but nothing seems to have come of that.

This is my first attempt at making a collage and it doesn't begin to represent what the valley looked like then and now, but there are two shots taken then and two today, in roughly the same places. Strangely, the shot of a small condominium of six houses looks more complete in the older photo, because all but two of the houses have now been demolished. A friend's house once stood on the empty space in front of the condo - but at least no-one was living there when it was wiped off the map, so no lives were lost.