Year: 2007

Edit: there is a new post here with lots of ways to donate to help out the victims.

The Jose Padilla case is already pushing this off the US headlines, which is deeply disappointing. The death toll (400-500 thus far) does not tell the whole story. Things you should know that are not necessarily going to make the headlines:

• It’s been revised up to an 8.0 earthquake, felt as far away as Colombia, Brazil, and Argentina. There have been hundreds of aftershocks, ranging from 7’s and 5’s on down.
• There’s probably 70-80,000 people directly affected, around 20,000 homeless.
• The city of Pisco was 70% destroyed. Try to picture that in your head — it’s a city of around 80,000 people. Seventy percent. Who knows how many bodies are trapped in the rubble. Photos of the worst of Pisco are here (warning, these are pictures of dead bodies laying in the street).
• Whole neighborhoods in other areas have been rendered uninhabitable, such as areas of Rimac in Lima and large areas of Ica. The adobe-and-straw construction has made entire blocks of “quintas” or enclosed alley apartment blocks very dangerous places to be.
• Cell phone, telephone, electric, and water service are all interrupted to varying degrees in various places. Water is flooding streets in a few locations. There will likely be the typical follow-on medical consequences. (Spain is sending equipment to provide clean water).
• The worst affected areas are a two-hour drive from the capital, on a 2 lane stretch of highway through the desert, which has been closed by collapsed bridges and sinkholes destroying the ability to drive some stretches. It is therefore taking aid 7 hours to reach the worst-hit areas.
• Amazingly, Internet service seems to be in pretty good shape.
• There’s a hotline for the victim list: 0-800-10828

For the best coverage, I’d suggest hitting the website of El Comercio, one of the leading papers in Peru. The BBC has a photo gallery and some eyewitness stories. But really, the English-language media isn’t doing a great job here. Far better is the coverage from Spain, such as El Pais and El Mundo.

I’ve been looking for anything like a fund drive, but can’t find anything targeted specifically to this disaster. I’ll post if that seems to change. Some banks in Lima have opened accounts to which donations can be wired directly.

And for those wondering — yes, I do still have friends and (somewhat distant) family there. So far, I haven’t heard from most of them, but they are largely in Lima, and not the worst-hit areas.