Quake shows lessons were not learned

Personal touch: UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres greeting children while visiting a camp for displaced earthquake victims in Palu. — Reuters

PALU: The young man standing atop a mound of grey mud and debris on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, waiting for an excavator he hoped would dig out the bodies of his parents, voiced the exasperation many feel in his earthquake-plagued country.

“This is something that happens all the time in Indonesia. Why aren’t we getting better at handling it?” Bachtiar cried as the machine clanked through the ruins of someone’s kitchen in the city of Palu.