Dark tourism draw: Indonesian earthquake city where mud buried homes exerts a ghoulish fascination for some, one year on

Thousands were killed in Palu, Sulawesi, in a September 2018 earthquake that triggered a tsunami and turned the ground into liquid mud that swallowed homes

‘Even graveyards can become tourist attractions,’ says official of visitors who take selfies amid the ruins and survivors who offer tours of liquefaction sites

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Fishing boats were stranded after an earthquake and tsunami hit Wani Village in West Coast of Donggala, Central Sulawesi, Indonesia on October 4, 2018. Photo: Eko Siswono Toyudho/Anadolu Agency

Published: 12:45pm, 26 Sep 2019Updated: 1:29pm, 26 Sep 2019

In the summer of 2018, Indonesian tourism minister Arief Yahya made a visit to Palu, a city nestled in a long, narrow bay on the island of Sulawesi. He called on the city to leverage its unique location and open its airport to international flights. Local tourism officials were excited.

A few months later, however, on September 28, the year’s deadliest earthquake collapsed the air traffic control tower, killing a man whose last act was to hasten the take-off of Palu’s last flight before the city’s name became synonymous with disaster.

He was one of the more than 4,800 victims of the disaster, which included a three-metre-high tsunami and liquefaction of the ground under a number of neighbourhoods.

One year on, although tourism has suffered a setback, it is also undergoing a transformation. As the city recovers and locals continue to put the pieces of their lives back together, Palu has found itself on map for so-called dark tourism.

“Even graveyards can become tourist attractions,” says Nurhalis, a tourism marketing official for Central Sulawesi province, of which Palu is the capital.

Nurhalis was among those still recovering from the quake in late October last year, in parts of the city suffering water and electricity shortages, and tourists had already start to arrive, he says – though they were not the type of visitor he had been hoping to see.