Campaign Seeks to Aid Venezuela Flood Victims

By EDGAR SANDOVAL

Dec. 25, 1999 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

The letter arrived a few days after Luis Medina heard the news about catastrophic flooding in his native Venezuela.

Towns were turning into cemeteries, his sister wrote from Caracas.

“Entire neighborhoods have disappeared in Carmen De Uria,” where only about 100 out of 7,000 people survived, his sister, Flor Medina, said. “Those who survived fled to the mountains.”

Medina was to meet his relatives in Carmen De Uria for the New Year’s holiday. Now, unable to travel to Venezuela, Medina was instinctively drawn to Los Angeles’ small and widely dispersed Venezuelan community. An ad hoc relief effort was born.

“This is one of the few efforts to unite Venezuelans here,” he said.

An estimated 1,500 people with Venezuelan roots live in the Los Angeles area, according to the Venezuela Inside and Out organization. Most of them work in radio, television, music and other sectors of the entertainment industry.

Working directly with the Venezuelan Consular Office in San Francisco, Medina this week formed Emergency in Venezuela and made an appeal for relief assistance. “People have been responding pretty well” to the appeal, Medina said.

Other individuals, along with churches and relief organizations have mounted efforts to help the estimated 150,000 people who were left homeless or otherwise seriously affected by the worst natural disaster in Venezuelan history. Estimates of the death toll range from 5,000 to 30,000.

The American Red Cross is encouraging people who want to help to make monetary donations to established relief organizations, which officials call the quickest and most effective way to help disaster victims.

Emergency in Venezuela members agree. “For transportation purposes, it makes sense to send money,” Medina said. “But we will take 1/8money or supplies 3/8 people are willing to donate.”

Group coordinators also want to make sure that donated goods are not delayed in getting to the intended recipients, as happened in some cases during the Hurricane Mitch aid effort.

Early last year, tons of goods collected for victims of Hurricane Mitch were stalled in Los Angeles because of a lack of funds to transport the goods. And after the supplies gathered in Los Angeles by the Nicaraguan consulate were shipped, they remained stranded for many weeks at a Nicaraguan port.

This time, Emergency in Venezuela members consulted with organizers of previous relief drives. “We learned from their mistakes,” said Praxis Mendez, president of Venezuela Inside and Out, who is coordinating relief efforts with Medina.

UPS has volunteered to ship all the collected items to Miami, according to Medina. The Venezuelan air force will fly the goods to Venezuela and distribute them to the affected areas, said Gerardo Coll, the Venezuelan consul in San Francisco.

The governor of Vargas State in north-central Venezuela sent a letter in which he asked Medina, who is president of Uno Productions, a music recording company in the San Fernando Valley, for “any help you can provide us.”

The Venezuelan honorary consul in Southern California, Maria Pineda, has been asking government officials in Orange and Los Angeles counties for help. Pineda wants to find experts who are willing to travel to Venezuela and help reconnect water and electrical services. But a distressed Pineda said there has been no response from government officials.

“We are going through the holidays; many people are out of town,” she said. Pineda added that she has not heard from aunts, uncles and cousins in Venezuela and has grown more anxious by the minute.

“I’m just afraid that we are going to forget all this in a few days and we will return to our normal lives,” Pineda said. “The help will be needed for months to come. There are children without parents, buried towns and many dead.”

The American Red Cross sent seven experts in logistics, communications and mental health in addition to $50,000 and 50,000 pounds of emergency relief supplies, such as blankets, water containers, comfort kits, and other items to the affected areas.

Private citizens are also lending a hand locally. The owners of Itana Bahia, a Brazilian restaurant in West Hollywood, will donate all of their Sunday proceeds to a relief organization in Tulsa, Okla., in an effort also overseen by Pineda.

The restaurant at 8711 Santa Monica Blvd. will open from 5 p.m. to 11 p.m.

“We just wanted to do something,” said owner Jack Ray, who credits his Brazilian wife, Itana Doria, with the idea. “We have no connections with Venezuela, but this is a tragedy that touched us.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

To Donate

Emergency in Venezuela is working with the Venezuelan Consular Office in San Francisco and is accepting donations for victims of recent floods. The organization can be reached at the following telephone numbers and addresses:

Emergency in Venezuela

main office

10061 Riverside Drive No. 808

Toluca Lake, CA 91602

(818) 763-3428 (day)

(818) 761-6133 (night)

1100 S. San Pedro St.

2nd Floor K-3

Los Angeles, CA 90015

13881 Tustin East Drive

Apt. 51C

Tustin, CA 92780