Earthquake recovery: Pisco, Peru

On Thanksgiving morning I arrived in Pisco, Peru, the epicenter of an earthquake in August that registered at 8.1 on the Richter scale. To even give you an idea of what this city looked like before August would be impossible, so little remains of it. The streets are filled with rubble piles, doorframes are left standing with no buildings behind them, and cement foundations are filled with Coleman tents where many of the dislodged residents have been living since August. Some parts of the city have returned to a semi-normal way of life, but others have fallen into a sort of stasis, as there is little money to rebuild and most are out of work.

I spent several days in Pisco talking to residents, walking through half-destroyed houses, sitting in dusty tents and listening to people's accounts of the earthquake. It was sobering just to hear about the terror of what they had lived through… The quake itself was a full three and a half minutes long, an earth-shaking so violent many could only huddle and listen to the deafening sound of buildings crashing down around them, like "ice falling off a glacier". They emerged into the dark night full of dust and debris, many badly wounded and others trying to free bodies from under cement ruins, but all terrified that a tsunami would follow to wipe out everything that was left. Guided by the faint light of cell phones and candles, they fled the city on foot, walking for hours through the night to find refuge in the desert surrounds. When they eventually returned to Pisco it was only to find their lives buried under rubble heaps or their damaged homes and businesses ransacked. Later they would wander through the bodies laid out in plastic in the central square to try and identify missing family and friends… To hear these things first hand was something that a lifetime of CNN could never have prepared me for. And to understand that their lives had been changed irrevocably was heartbreaking.

Pisco has been cleaned up since August, but as foreign relief workers have left the city, the money and food that were supposed to continue arriving have disappeared. Shipments have been disbanded in Lima and the goods taken off to the black market to be sold. The prices of food and milk in stores have doubled and tripled, and the government promises help that never comes. Many of the children are badly malnourished, and almost all have respiratory problems. One man told me, "The earthquake was what we felt, what made our houses fall, but the real disaster is just beginning now that people are starting to understand that we have been forgotten."

A group of families are living in tents on the cement foundations of their former homes, right next to the cemetary. They've put up a make-shift plastic wall to keep the graves out of mind, but the kids told me that when the earthquake first happened they "didn't want to eat because the dead people smelled too bad." The skin under their shirts is red with bites from the tents that have become infested with fleas and bedbugs. Their eyes are fatigued, as the scorching coastal desert summer is arriving and their tents are too hot to sleep in as soon as the sun rises. When I pulled up here on my motorcycle they crowded around it like a mob, all making pleas for me to tell my country how bad things were and to ask them for help.

I walked through a family's house that hadn't been completely destroyed, but was a maze where one who didn't step carefully was bound to fall through the wooden planked floor. Holes in the roof were covered shabbily with scrap plywood and two youngest boys were scolded for playing in the trash-strewn rubble heap that used to be the kitchen. The father told me that when they fled the city after the earthquake they returned to their partial home to find all their belongings stolen. Now the government tells them the house must be demolished -- and that they must pay for it. There were dark circles under the man's and he said to me, "We will have nowhere to live if our house is destroyed. What will we do?"

A radiant black-haired girl named Marilu found me taking pictures on her dusty street and wanted to show me the statue of the Virgin Mary they'd put on the corner. I learned from neighbors later that this 8 year old had been pulled unconscious out of her collapsed house and recessitated, only to awake screaming that her brother was still in his room. They didn't get to him in time. Marilu now lives in a band-aid shack of plastic and wooden boards with another family (her mother lost her legs and is in Lima recovering) and clings to you like she'll never let go.

I am going back to Pisco soon, and what those worst off are most hoping for are the temporary wooden pre-fab houses with glass windows and screens, and doors that lock. I have visited the site where they are sold, and for between $400 and $700 each (depending on the size of the family), the company will transport and install the houses in Pisco. I have also talked with some local business owners to establish a voucher program for basic food needs like fruit, vegetables and milk, so that those without proper means of refrigeration can be assured fresh food.

I am trying to raise $4,500 to put five families into the wooden houses, and to provide the rest of the neighborhood with some quantity of food vouchers that might last them through the New Year. I will be handling everything there myself, so as to assure that every last cent will be converted into a home or a food voucher. If you would like to donate, you can go to http://www.paypal.com/ and use a debit or credit card to send a donation to tracymotz@hotmail.com.

Thanks... Will update with progress.