wfn.org | Relief Workers Scramble to Get Aid to Victims of Hurricane Mitch

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6-November-1998 
98368 
 
    Relief Workers Scramble to Get Aid 
    to Victims of Hurricane Mitch 
 
    by Alexa Smith 
 
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Over the telephone, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) 
missionary the Rev. Ken Brown in Managua, Nicaragua, sounded tired. 
 
    He had just gotten back from a city called Leon, about 70 miles outside 
Managua, where he was part of a relief crew that hauled supplies from the 
Inter-Church Center for Theological and Social Studies (CIEETS) to the 
storm-ravaged town. 
 
    It wasn't easy to get there.  After about an hour's wait in a still 
light drizzle, they were flagged ahead to cross a provisional bridge put in 
place by the army just minutes before.  Fifteen more kilometers up the road 
- with another bridge gone - the car  plugged across the muddy river, with 
water lapping up over the hood. 
 
    Nor was it easy to be in Leon once they arrived.  One hundred 
twenty-six people are dead, 132,000 more are homeless.  A neighboring 
community, San Jacinto, is destroyed -- its 25 houses swept away, as are 
Las Conlinas and San Lucas. "It is," said Brown, "a tremendous emotional 
blow, just devastating.  The major problem is that we can't get to people. 
So many roads are cut, so many bridges are washed away. 
 
    "And that's impeding rescue and relief efforts." 
 
    New figures are coming out daily.  The latest information sheet from 
CIEETS estimates that more than a half-million people are officially 
"damnificados," which is Spanish for "homeless."  More than 60 percent of 
the agricultural export crops - bananas, melons - are gone and losses of 
the basic grains that Nicaraguans eat - beans and rice - are much higher. 
Officials estimate that 70 bridges are either damaged or destroyed and that 
approximately 13,000 kilometers of highway are ruined.  Helicopters are in 
short supply to deliver aid, to airlift stranded and sickening survivors of 
the flooding or to transport rotting corpses 
 
    In short, as Managua-based the Rev. Veronica Argueda of the Council of 
Evangelical Churches of Nicaragua (CEPAD), puts it: "People are dead.  And 
there are not enough resources to get to the different places at once." 
 
    In Nicaragua, those places include the regions of Chinandega, Leon, 
Matagalpa and Esteli.  "We witnessed hundreds of people marching south 
toward Managua with only a plastic bag or two," said Brown, "Whole 
communities leaving in search of food and water.  The sight and stench of 
rotting dead cows, horses and chickens brought us closer to the horrible 
reality." 
 
    The story is the same in Honduras but the scope is much bigger.  As of 
Nov. 5, the government was reporting 6,420 people dead, 5,807 disappeared, 
10,114 injured and 1,411,462 homeless.  There are 812,000 people still 
living in emergency shelters and, according to the Christian Commission on 
Development (CCD) in Tegucigalpa, officials are apparently giving up on 
ever getting accurate statistics on the numbers of victims of the flooding. 
 
    "We're running out of basic foods," said PC(USA) missionary Tim Wheeler 
in the CCD Office in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, which is part of a massive 
effort between government and nongovernmental agencies to both rescue 
survivors and get relief to them.  "We're hoping to get emergency relief 
from churches in the U.S. through Church World Service (CWS).  But right 
now there's a whole lot of difficulty just buying food for distribution. 
 
    "Our resources are being depleted very quickly." 
 
    Flights from governments and nongovernmental agencies, such as 
churches, are getting into Honduras now and more are scheduled.  The 
government of Mexico sent 700 tons of food, 11 tons of medicine, 16 
helicopters and four rescue planes, as well as 445 rescue personnel to 
Honduras Nov. 4.  The Cuban government dispatched a team of physicians to 
the Moskitia, a hard-hit coastal area.  And Church World Service - the 
relief arm of the National Council of Churches (NCC) in New York City - is 
preparing shipments of more than $2.5 million in food and medicines to 
Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, much of it donated bulk materials. 
(Fifty-five thousand dollars was given from PC(USA) One Great Hour of 
Sharing funds.) 
 
    CWS already has sent $40,000 in Blanket Fund monies directly to CCD, 
while the PC(USA) has sent smaller sums to partners - such as CCD and CEPAD 
- to help support their relief efforts.  According to Susan Ryan, director 
of Presbyterian Disaster Assistance (PDA), the denomination has already 
earmarked $100,000 for relief work in 1998 and another $100,000 for 
recovery work in 1999. 
 
    Ryan said updates and liturgies are available now on PDA's Web site at 
http://www.pcusa.org/pda 
 
    The account number for Tropical Storm Relief is #9-2000139.  Checks may 
be mailed to Central Receiving Service, 100 Witherspoon St., Louisville, KY 
40202.  Credit cards gifts may be telephoned into PresbyTel at 
1-800-UP-2-DATE (1-800-872-3283).  Nearly $22,000 has been donated over the 
PresbyTel lines in the past two days, with $20,000 of that given by one 
donor. 
 
    Though the CWS Director's Advance Fund sent $20,000 to CIEETS earlier 
this week, CWS is waiting for further proposals from Nicaragua before 
sending more aid.  Nicaraguan relief workers say that coordination there 
has been hard because the Nicaraguan government has failed to develop a 
clear-cut national plan.  Protestant organizations - while dispensing aid 
to some churches - have so far been left out of what coordinated relief the 
government has authorized through the Roman Catholic Church. 
 
    It was not clear at press time whether taxes would be leveled on relief 
goods coming into Nicaragua's ports -  an almost unheard of problem - and 
the president, Arnoldo Aleman, was being criticized widely for either 
politicizing the tragedy or ignoring its depths. "The New York Times" 
reported Nov. 4 that the president was greeted by jeers and catcalls in 
Leon itself on an inspection trip.  "We don't need an inspection, we need 
food," and "Where is the aid?" were repeated questions hurled from the 
crowd. 
 
    PC(USA) missionary Emerson Wilson in northern Esteli - just three hours 
from the Honduran border - saw government workers handing out candy to 
children and asked, "Where are the beans and rice and water?" He was told, 
"We don't have any."  As PC(USA) mission worker David Gist in Managua put 
it: "The coordination [that seems to be happening in Honduras] is not the 
case here.  The lack of government response - and the response specifically 
of this president [I've heard Nicaraguans say] - has been an abomination." 
 
    In Nicaragua, CEPAD is laying out a two-pronged approach to the 
disaster: trying to save lives with available material support and 
providing a pastoral presence.  "We feel weak," Argueda told the 
Presbyterian News Service Nov. 5.   "There is a constant state of emergency 
 ... but though we feel helpless, we just can't sit here without doing 
anything.  We know as Christians we have to do something. 
 
    "So the feeling of response - of wanting to do something - overrides 
the helplessness." 
 
     There are all kinds of helplessness in this disaster. 
 
    Joaquin Mejia of Tegucigalpa - who served as a reconciliation and 
mission volunteer last year in First Presbyterian Church in Santa Ana - 
knows that the six members of his immediate family survived the flood, as 
did their house.  "We didn't sleep for three or four days," he told the 
Presbyterian News Service.  "It was horrible; I thought the whole city was 
going to be flooded. 
 
    "We just listened to the radio," he said, noting that after seven of 
the city's 10 bridges flooded, there was no way to leave. 
 
    But the family is still waiting to hear from his father's sister, her 
seven children and her 14 grandchildren, who lived in the mountains where 
there were massive mud slides. 
 
    "The whole country is almost destroyed," he said.  "There are houses in 
the river, people in the streets and a lot of water in houses.  It is 
horrible." 

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