Officials Appeal for Money, Medical Supplies for Victims of Quake in San Salvador

Relief officials in Los Angeles County on Sunday issued urgent appeals for money and medical supplies as they learned the extent of the destruction and casualties caused by the earthquake Friday in the capital city of El Salvador.

Ana Margoth Mendez, consul general for the El Salvador Consulate in Los Angeles, said donations of money and medicine appear to be the best and quickest way to aid the thousands who were left homeless and injured in San Salvador and surrounding communities.

The consulate issued a list of needed medical supplies that included gloves, syringes, analgesics, crutches, surgical clothes, gauze, soap and antibiotics.

Unofficial estimates as of Sunday put the toll at 400 dead and 6,810 injured.

Los Angeles-based Medical Aid for El Salvador on Sunday was trying to arrange an airlift of 11,000 pounds of medical supplies either tonight or Tuesday, said Jon Floyd, director of emergency services for the organization.

“The situation there is critical,” Floyd said. “There’s so many people injured, particularly children.”

Devastated Neighborhoods

With major rescue efforts concentrated on collapsed buildings in downtown San Salvador, little or no medical aid has been dispatched to the injured and homeless in four devastated neighborhoods, he said.

The organization, which is coordinating efforts with the relief group Operation California, already has sent two doctors and is waiting to send 25 doctors and nurses on the first available flight, Floyd said.

By Sunday afternoon, the Orange County chapter of the American Red Cross in Santa Ana had been flooded with more than 500 telephone calls, many of them from Salvadoran nationals seeking information on friends or family, said spokeswoman Barbara L. Lohman. Those calls were being referred to the Salvadoran consulate, she said.

Lohman said her organization is accepting financial donations, but she did not know how much had been received since the quake struck early Friday. As for providing or accepting other supplies, she said they were awaiting direction from the International Red Cross in El Salvador “as to any special requirements they might have.”

The El Salvador Consulate and the International Red Cross received hundreds of monetary donations on Sunday and sent out volunteers to contact hospitals and medical supply companies. The consulate, area churches and other agencies are also accepting clothes, blankets, food and other supplies.

“What we need is help, help, help, help,” said Mendez inside the consulate offices on the seventh floor at 634 S. Spring St., Los Angeles

Hundreds of people--as they did Saturday--streamed into the consulate to make donations and seek information about family members who live in the devastated areas. Dozens of others gathered outside on Spring Street to listen to a volunteer announce the neighborhoods hardest hit by the earthquake.

6,000 Letters Received

Mendez, who learned Saturday night that her family survived the earthquake, said that TACA, El Salvador’s national airline, has agreed to carry supplies and act as a mail carrier for families attempting to communicate between Los Angeles and San Salvador. One volunteer worker said the consulate received 6,000 letters Saturday night.

By late Sunday afternoon, the consulate had received nearly $23,000 in donations, and the Red Cross center had collected about $5,000.

El Rescate, a nonprofit organization that aids Central American refugees, reported that its volunteers had collected $5,000 and 3,000 messages from refugees in Los Angeles who are trying to learn the fate of relatives in El Salvador. Jaime Flores, a social worker for the group, said a private air service carried the first batch of messages to San Salvador, where the Catholic Church will try to locate the relatives.

At Our Lady Queen of Angels Church in Los Angeles, priests announced Sunday that contributions collected during the 11 masses over the weekend and from a benefit dance Saturday night would be donated to El Salvador via the Salvadoran Archdiocese. Father Michael Kennedy said the parish hoped to raise $25,000, and Father Luis Olivares said the Archdiocese of Los Angeles contributed $100,000 to Archbishop Arturo Rivera y Damas in San Salvador.

Times staff writer Gary Jarlson contributed to this story.