Washington - These striking and quirky monuments bear witness to some tragic events.
UTA FLIGHT 772 MEMORIAL
The world’s most remote memorial to the victims of UTA Flight 772
ON September 19, 1989, a Libyan terrorist detonated a suitcase bomb on UTA Flight 772 over the Sahara desert, killing all 170 people on board.
Due to the remote resting place of the wreck, the wreckage is still scattered around the area, a glaring but out-of-sight reminder of the tragedy. After 18 years of nothing but a desert filled with debris, the victims’ families came together and decided to build a monument in one of the most remote places on the globe.
Funded by the $170 million aid package provided by the Libyan government, trucks were driven almost 70km out to transport countless stones to place at the crash site.
After two months of gruelling work in a brutal climate, the monument was complete. The stones, seen from above, resemble a compass with a plane in it.
Around the edge of the monument are 170 broken mirrors, each symbolising a victim in the crash. At one end, one of the plane’s wingtips point up and a plaque lists the names of the victims.
BEICHUAN EARTHQUAKE MUSEUM
A museum and memorial built amid the rubble of a town obliterated by nature
The 2008 Sichuan earthquake was, as major earthquakes tend to be, a catastrophe.
The Richter scale 8 Earth shaker, referred to as the “Wenchuan Earthquake”, levelled much of Sichuan province, leaving roughly 4.8 million people without homes and taking the lives of 80 000. The profound loss was incomprehensible, but one town in particular stood out – in the city of Beichuan, the large, populated high school had partially collapsed, killing more than 1 300 children.
China began to rebuild, but the devastation was widespread and it would take time. Either razed or evacuated due to a number of strong aftershocks, many towns and cities, including Beichuan, became eerie ghost towns, with many hoarding the remains of their dead.
In Beichuan, only a fifth of the buildings were left standing and there were no resources to dig through the rubble and recover the countless bodies. It stands as an entire town-turned-gravesite.
Since the quake, Beichuan has become the place that represents the magnitude of the calamity. A museum has been erected on the remains of the doomed high school, and a memorial wall with the names of the tens of thousands lost stands too tall and too long. The rest of the town will remain in shambles, a graveyard of nature’s design.
Visitors travel from all over to come to Beichuan and grieve, paying their respects to the victims of this epic catastrophe.
In a currently growing trend of governments leaving the preserved remains of a disaster as a memorial, its preservation has assured it will remain a place of ghosts, as long as those ghosts are remembered.
PESHTIGO FIRE MUSEUM
A museum devoted to the victims and the survivors of the most catastrophic fire in American history
Peshtigo is the site of the most lethal natural fire in US history.
On October 8, 1871, dry conditions and strong winds invited a deadly inferno that swept through Peshtigo and neighbouring settlements, claiming at least 1 200 lives and 400 000ha. The bustling lumber town was devoured by the firestorm.
Opened in 1963, the museum stands not only as a memorial to lives lost, but also as a testament to the tenacity of a town that rose from the ashes. Displays include bits and pieces of a charred past, letters recounting the clean-up and survival, and a mural depicting the town pre- and post-disaster.
A mass grave containing the remains of 300 of the unidentified and the marked graves of other victims holds the sad distinction of being the first historical marker in Wisconsin history. – Slate.com