I’m just back to Lima after a trip to our farm, through the centre of the earthquake-affected area (the province of Ica, south of Lima) so I’ll give you an update right away.
Actually I’m too tired to write or think much now, so I’m afraid this is a messy collage of impressions, opinions, and facts.
We took 2 cars (4 WDs) to the farm, loaded to the gills with food and blankets for the workers on the farm, ALL of whom had lost their houses in the quake. We also sent tents down by freight. The road was not a problem – some cracks, very rough repairs in a few places, and a drive across a river bed where the bridge has been badly damaged (luckily, it is the dry season so river itself could be redirected through a couple of pipes) but the trip was slow, with a lot of traffic, including overloaded trucks and other vehicles looking to be carrying relief supplies. For about 150km damage was minimal, mainly toppled walls, a few landslips, but when we reached Chincha, about 180km from Lima, it got very messy. Side streets were filled with rubble, roofs were down, and the highway was lined with of dolls-houses - their front walls having fallen outwards, exposing abandoned living rooms. Wherever there was space, it was filled with clusters of tents, streets, basketball courts, an archaeological site. Someone had made a canvas home on the median strip (of the Panamerican highway). The tents ranged from high-tech hiking tents to plastic-bag patchwork over an a-frame of stakes.
The poorer areas, where the construction material is mud-brick, had been devastated, but in other places everything looked fine. Modern reinforced concrete and brick houses and businesses were undamaged. There were exceptions to this where the land had fallen away, but as a generalization the difference is stark. The poor are homeless, the better off merely inconvenienced. If there was a surprise, it was at how little affected some areas are - media reports in Peru and presumably elsewhere have only showed the areas of worst damage. To give an example, in the area of Ica where we have an office, not a single house was visibly earthquake-damaged, and services (phone, electricity, water, internet) are all working again. In contrast our workers, living just a few kilometres away, have all lost their houses. Yet people are patching, or rebuilding, using the same materials.On the farm we distributed the goods we have brought and gave the workers the rest of the day off (they had already had the previous days off, but had come in for the morning). There were plenty of smiles all round, and it felt a bit like Christmas. The farm escaped damage – one partly constructed wall for the planned chemical store had fallen over, but by the time we got there it was back up. The well, our main concern, seemed fine. Our nursery reservoir, which is about 3 metres deep and is usually kept half full, lost most its water when it sloshed about during the quake, spilling up and over the sides. I guess that was a 2-3 metre tsunami in a meter and a half of water. Amazing.
One question everyone is asking by phone is whether aid is getting through. I’m not well equipped to judge, but it seems so. It must help that the badly affected towns are only a few hours from Lima along the country’s major highway. We saw tankers distributing water, the army handing out supplies, and many, many vehicles coming in carrying everything from fuel to bamboo (to build shelters?). The big problem early on was water, but the tankers are everywhere. I saw tankers delivering water to shanty towns that have probably never had piped water. Shops have half-empty shelves, but there is ample food about (Ica is an extremely productive agricultural area.) In Chincha, the first of the badly-affected towns you come to travelling from Lima, there were beggars on the highway, with signs asking for help (‘I’m cold’, ‘please’, ’support us’), but in Ica there was none of that, just a lot of activity clearing wreckage, burning rubbish etc. Many workers were out in the fields again, harvesting the paprika, asparagus, or other crops grown there.
OK, that’s about all for now. I’ll go on-line and send.
Thanks everyone for your interest and concern. It is great to have contact & support in an on-line community.
John
No comments:
Post a Comment