Quake Victims in Colombia Loot Supplies

By DAVID AQUILA LAWRENCE and JUANITA DARLING

Jan. 30, 1999 12 AM PT

SPECIAL TO THE TIMES

ARMENIA, Colombia —

Hundreds of earthquake survivors who had lined up before dawn ransacked the Red Cross relief center here Friday in a desperate rush to feed families that have gone hungry since the tremor shook Colombia earlier this week.

Security forces responded by firing into the air and filling the devastated downtown with tear gas. Thousands of extra troops from across the country have flooded the city since looting first broke out Wednesday.

The looting of the Red Cross supplies--including mattresses, food and water--was widely blamed on disorganization and bureaucracy.

Relief supplies have been slow to reach the estimated 200,000 people left homeless by Monday’s magnitude-6 earthquake, and survivors who spent night after night in the rain have grown hungry and exasperated.

At first, residents peacefully formed lines outside the Red Cross relief center Friday and patiently filled out complicated forms. But after eight hours of standing in line, frustrated and angry survivors decided to take what they needed, and a melee broke out.

“They left us practically without supplies,” Red Cross official Luis Beleno told the Associated Press.

Red Cross national coordinator Carlos Alberto Giraldo said goods will no longer be handed out at the warehouse but rather at 30 food distribution centers being set up throughout the city.

Efforts of rescue workers were interrupted as authorities tried to reestablish order amid the looting at the relief center and elsewhere.

“The tragedy isn’t the problem,” said Diego Martinez, a rescue worker from Cali. “It is the violence.”

His rescue team, which has been searching for trapped survivors and bodies since the quake jolted Colombia’s coffee country, causing more than 940 deaths, had planned to begin work on a new site Friday but was halted by the gunfire.

The interruption in their work was especially detrimental, Martinez said, because rescuers fear that time is running out for the survivors buried under rubble. No one has been found alive since Wednesday.

After the looting first broke out at downtown markets midweek, locals were quickly joined by club-wielding bands from outside the disaster area that roamed the streets and broke into abandoned stores. Merchants have either loaded their inventory onto trucks and left or given it away before it can be stolen.

President Andres Pastrana, who is overseeing the relief effort from Armenia, has called in 4,000 troops and imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew to discourage looting.

Special correspondent Lawrence reported from Armenia, Times staff writer Darling from Bogota.

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How to Help

These groups are accepting money to help victims of Colombia’s earthquake:

American Red Cross

(800) HELP-NOW (435-7669)

2700 Wilshire Blvd.

P.O. Box 57930

Los Angeles, CA 90057

https://www.acrossla.org

World Vision

(888) 511-6565