by Allen Clinton, press officer
EL SALVADOR (January 24, 2001) -- It was 11:34 a.m. Saturday. As the next 45-seconds ticked off, Miguel Angel Mahano thought he either was having a heart attack or that the world was ending. Mountains, homes, even the turkeys in the trees, became one big blur as the countryside rumbled, jumped up and shook everything, including him. Then there was silence. He opened his eyes and saw a calm blue sky directly overhead as he lay on his back. He had survived the 7.6-magnitude earthquake, but feared for his wife and six children, especially his daughter Norma Lizette, born just 12 days before.
"I've never run so fast in my life," says 28-year-old Mahano, who lost one of his rubber boots on the narrow hillside path as he rushed back to his tiny village of Linares Caulotan, Usulután.
"I got to my house and no one was there so I started to run again, but stopped and turned around and saw that my house wasn't a house anymore," he explainss in one breath. He says his heart still races thinking about what happened that day. After 10 minutes of frantic search, he found his wife and kids down by the nearby Lempa River. They were shaken, but alive.
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Miguel Angel Mahano looks at his daughter, Norma Lizette, born on January 3, 2001.
All photos © CARE 2001.
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Authorities estimate the death toll from the earthquake at more than 700 people. The quake also injured almost 4,000 people, destroyed 141,000 homes and forced 68,000 people to evacuate. In a national broadcast that night, President Francisco Flores declared a national state of emergency, and called on citizens and the international community to help.
While much of the immediate attention focused on the massive landslide that killed hundreds of people in the middle-class San Salvador suburb of Santa Tecla, CARE has been reaching out to communities in outlying areas of the mountainous nation.
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Food distribution in Linares, Caulotan.
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"Many of the roads were blocked by landslides," says Sonia Silva, CARE program director in El Salvador. "As they are cleared, we have been rushing in to provide food, water and medical supplies. And so far, CARE has reached nearly 67,000 people. Our staff are saying that these towns look as if they were bombed."
Relief after days of isolation
Boulders and tree limbs line the narrow dirt road to Linares Caulotan. As the CARE truck stops, a man runs up to greet staffer Roberto Garcia. Small in stature, the man wears a huge smile on his face as he reaches for Garcia's hand to shake. The man is Miguel Angel Mahano. The CARE truck carries a load of food in the back.
"We thought everyone forgot about us. Thank God. Thank God," Mahano says to Garcia. "You are the first person we've seen since it happened."
Looking around, the walls of mud brick homes lay scattered on the ground, their roofs collapsed. Most homes, including Mahano's, are reduced to mounds of rubble.
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CARE staffer Roberto Garcia visits the remains of Miguel Angel Garcia's home.
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As other people see the truck, they walk towards it. Some people run.
As a second CARE truck drives up, Garcia speaks to the community about how the distribution of food will be organized, and explains that every family will receive a five-day ration of food. As sacks of rice and beans, boxes of sardines, bags of flour for tortillas and plastic containers of cooking oil are unloaded, a line forms and Garcia takes a seat at a mud-stained wooden table. He begins reading out the names on the list. Everyone is there. The food is distributed.
Mahano and his community have been waiting for CARE's arrival. Beyond the five-day food ration, the community is worried about rebuilding in the long term. Mahano hands Garcia a hand-written request for assistance, complete with the names of affected families and the extent of damage to be repaired: of 51 homes, 50 were destroyed.
Mahano says he feels, "a bit calmer now," knowing everyone there is alive at least.
Rebuilding from scratch
Across the country, families like Mahano's are staying outside their broken and battered homes as aftershocks continue. But like Mahano and his neighbors, people have begun picking up the pieces of their broken lives and thinking about what comes next.
"The most important part after an emergency is the physical and psychological rehabilitation," says Mario Lima, CARE's deputy regional director for Latin America, who arrived in San Salvador two days after the quake. "The effects of this trauma are immeasurable and long-lasting. Returning to everyday life will
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Clearing destroyed buildings in Santa Tecla.
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take enormous energy and hope for the future."
The cost of the damage to the country's infrastructure is an estimated $1 billion, and it could take two to three years to rebuild. This week, CARE began organizing communities to build thousands of temporary shelters, an interim step before reconstruction of permanent structures begins.
According to Lima, "Our immediate challenge is getting temporary shelters up and latrines in the ground before the hard rains begin."
"Then the real work starts as we work with communities and partners to rebuild towns from the ground up."
