Kauhajoki tries to get by despite pain and sorrow

Hundreds of candles light up memorial site set up in quiet town centre

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Hundreds of memorial candles burn on a Kauhajoki sidewalk on Thursday afternoon. Local residents discuss in disbelief the events that many still find hard to accept as reality.
      “I’ve constantly talked about it with my friends. Only last night I started feeling bad. I began to understand properly the magnitude of what has happened”, Katri Kuusela says.
      Someone is standing quietly by the hundreds of candles lit at the spontaneous memorial site in the town centre.
      Another person drives by slowly with eyes fixed on the same candles.
      On a beautiful autumn day one question is on everybody’s mind.
      How was this possible in Kauhajoki?
     
Outside the town hall, town manager Antti Rantakokko is giving an interview to a Swedish journalist. Rantakokko talks about things clearly and analytically. He appears calm.
      “My job is to try to calm people down”, he says.
      Even if broadcasting vehicles of various television stations no longer block the entrance to the city hall, life in the community of 14,000 people is hardly back to normal.
      Local residents explain how people seem reticent and detached.
      “My feelings have now subsided a bit, but in the last few days I have not really been able to accomplish anything”, Leena Hirvelä says.
     
Town manager Rantakokko shares Hirvelä’s sentiments.
      “I knew two of the victims. Fortunately I was not aware of this while the situation was going on. The first reaction did not come until in the church on Tuesday evening, and after that when meeting with the next of kin of the victims.”
     
In the editorial office of the local newspaper Kauhajoen Kunnallislehti a hundred metres away, phones are no longer ringing off the hook. The flood of enquiries from domestic and international media outlets has receded.
      The atmosphere in the coffee room is pensive.
      “It feels as if every single Kauhajoki resident now carries the brand of a murder-site on their chest. There is no going back, and from now on this will be part of Kauhajoki’s history”, local journalist Jari Ketola contemplates.
      The way Ketola sees it, Tuesday’s events will continue to have an effect on Kauhajoki for quite some time.
      Knowledge of the school killings will not necessarily be a huge boon in attracting returning migrants or job-seekers.
      “Maybe in ten years’ time the total impact of Tuesday’s events on Kauhajoki can be assessed”, Ketola ponders.
     
In Ketola’s view neither Kauhajoki nor its residents have been blamed for the tragedy.
      This was not the first school shooting incident in Finland or the world.
      People in Kauhajoki earnestly hope it was the last.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Jokela tries to get back to normal (13.11.2007)

See also:
  Eleven die in shooting bloodbath (24.9.2008)

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