wfn.org | CWS Responds to Hurricane Mitch

[CAROL_FOUKE.parti@ecunet.org (CAROL FOUKE)]

National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.
Internet: news@ncccusa.org

Contact: Wendy S. McDowell, NCC, 212-870-2227

109NCC11/5/98       FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

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EDITORS: When listing organizations receiving funds for 
humanitarian response to Hurricane Mitch, please include:

CHURCH WORLD SERVICE, Attn. Hurricane Mitch, #LAHD82, P.O. 
Box 968, Elkhart, IN 46515.  Phone pledges or credit card 
donations: 1-800-762-0968.

CWS works in more than 80 countries, including the U.S., in 
disaster relief, human development and refugee assistance.  
It is a ministry of the National Council of Churches, the 
nation's preeminent ecumenical organization, which includes 
34 Protestant and Orthodox member communions with a combined 
membership of nearly 52 million.
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CWS RESPONDS TO CATASTROPHIC HURRICANE MITCH IN LATIN 
AMERICA

 NEW YORK, Nov. 5 ---- Church World Service (CWS) is 
providing blankets and emergency shipments to Honduras in 
support of an international appeal responding to Hurricane 
Mitch, one of the most catastrophic disasters to strike 
Latin America this century.

 CWS has sent $40,000 in Blanket Fund monies directly to 
the Honduras-based Christian Commission for Development (CCD 
- Comision Christiana de Desarollo), a long-time CWS 
partner, and is supporting a $250,000 appeal by Action by 
Churches Together (ACT) International to assist CCD in 
relief efforts.

At the request of CCD, CWS is organizing a shipment of 
commodities valued at $45,000 that will include tents, rice, 
beans, powdered milk and health and layette kits.  ACT 
International is supporting a CCD project to provide for the 
short-term needs of 12,000 of the most vulnerable families 
affected by the hurricane who live in the coastal regions of 
Honduras, including La Moskitia, Quimistan, and Santa 
Barbara.  This relief program is expected to last through 
the end of February 1999.

In Nicaragua, CWS will be sending $20,000 from the CWS 
Director's Advance Fund to Centro Intereclesial de Estudios 
Teologicos y Sociales (CIEETS).

Flooding and mudslides have killed at least 9,000 in 
Honduras and Nicaragua.  In northern Nicaragua near 
Posoltega, between 1,000 to 1,500 people who lived in four 
villages at the foot of the Casitas volcano are presumed 
dead after a crater lake collapsed, causing a massive 
mudslide.

Noemi Espinoza of CCD said in a telephone interview by 
Joseph Moran of the North Carolina CROP office that the 
disaster was too horrible to describe.  "The devastation 
won't be felt just this week and next, but will be with us 
for a long time to come," she said.  Some have estimated it 
might take a full 40 years to recover from this disaster, 
which has destroyed more than half of Honduras' 
infrastructure and uprooted some 300,000 people.

Luis F. Bueso, an eyewitness to the disaster in 
Honduras who has been in contact with the CWS office in 
Elkhart, said the disaster was "unimaginable."

"In Honduras we don't have the necessary structure to 
withstand a calamity of this nature," Mr. Bueso explained.  
"The houses of the lower class in Honduras are built of 
cardboard, clay, plastic bags, mud, adobe, stones and wood, 
and were located on high-risk zones like hills or 
riversides."

"Among the population of developed countries it will be 
hard to conceive of our situation, but here in Honduras 
almost nobody can afford to pay an insurance policy," he 
said.  "Therefore people who lost their possessions have 
lost them for good."

There is also a severe lack of medical supplies and 
physicians.  Mr. Bueso reported a heartbreaking story.  "I 
just saw a man here in Tegucigalpa carrying his dead, two-
year-old daughter on his shoulder, who said she had died 10 
hours earlier because of the lack of medical attention."

In addition to the shipment of commodities, CWS will 
assist efforts to transport a volunteer medical team from 
Cuba to Honduras to provide needed medical assistance.

Based on further assessments elsewhere in the Caribbean 
area, other agencies may seek funding from ACT.

Areas of El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico were also 
affected by Hurricane Mitch.

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