People from all walks of life gathered in Indonesia's Aceh province Thursday to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, with local leaders stressing the importance of not forgetting the lessons of the disaster.

The ceremony, which included a mass prayer for the victims, took place in a convention center in the city of Sigli at the northeastern tip of Aceh. The tsunami killed more than 160,000 people in Indonesia alone, with most of those deaths occurring in Aceh.

In a speech at the commemoration, acting Aceh Gov. Nova Iriansyah urged people to take part in disaster preparedness efforts "so that these communities could help spread disaster mitigation programs among the general public."

National Disaster Mitigation Agency chief Doni Monardo said disaster mitigation measures and programs have to be prioritized since earthquakes and tsunamis will occur again.

"The earthquake and tsunami in 2004 was not the first," he said. "Therefore, there is no excuse for us for not to prepare (for a future disaster)."

Doni said that the government is now designing a concept on how to educate people about disasters since Indonesia sits on the so-called Pacific Ring of Fire.

He said the Disaster Resilience Family Program would be introduced next year, voicing hope that Aceh would play a pioneering role in this program.

(A villager starts to rebuild his house using materials from his old one in Pariaman Regency in the quake-hit West Sumatra Province on Oct. 28, 2009.)

Zukhri Adan, 46, who lost his younger sister, grandparents, uncles and cousins in the tsunami, said that Acehnese need to remember that a lack of disaster awareness and preparedness was a factor in the province's high death toll.

"It is a wrong way of thinking to say this disaster was just God's will, meaning it is our destiny, and so we could do nothing," he said.

"God also gives us a brain. We have to learn from the past disaster in order to minimize the number of casualties in case of a future disaster," he said.

Fifteen years later, many people have returned to live in coastal areas, even in the so-called "red zone" covering an area within 2 kilometers of the coastline, which had been hit hard by the tsunami.

(Dewi Rahmatika)

Local governments have warned them to not forget the disaster and live elsewhere in anticipation of a future tsunami.

But many choose to ignore the advice.

"A disaster is God's will. That is why we dare to come back to the house I have been living in since I was a baby," said Dewi Rahmatika, 34, in front of her house in Ulee Lheue, considered the tsunami's "ground zero."

"We have to accept all the consequences if a tsunami happens again in the future, if that is the God's will" said Dewi, who lost her father in the tsunami.

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