Church Seeks Aid for Heavily Rattled Salvadorans

L.A. Times Archives

Feb. 19, 2001 12 AM PT

From Times Wire Services

SAN SALVADOR —

El Salvador’s Roman Catholic Church issued an urgent call Sunday for food and clothes from abroad for hundreds of thousands of disaster-weary victims of two quakes that have killed more than 1,200 people this year.

With hundreds of schools destroyed or damaged by the major quakes--the first on Jan. 13 and the second on Tuesday--the government also said it was suspending the school year in the tiny Central American country of 6.2 million people.

The decision was the latest setback after the quakes that have also left tens of thousands of people homeless and devastated infrastructure across the impoverished, coffee-exporting nation.

“I call on the international community to urgently and generously send aid of all kinds: food, clothing, money,” the archbishop of San Salvador, Fernando Saenz Lacalle, said after celebrating Mass in the capital of the Catholic-dominated country.

The magnitude 6.6 quake Tuesday killed at least 400 people in 30 towns throughout the center of El Salvador to add to the toll of more than 800 deaths from January’s magnitude 7.6 disaster.

Aid from abroad, including from the United States, Mexico, Honduras, Taiwan and Spain, has been flown in, but quake victims are still clamoring for drinking water, food and building materials.

The quakes have been followed by hundreds of aftershocks, including one of magnitude 5.3 Saturday that caused some already damaged walls to collapse and further rattled Salvadorans’ nerves.

“The entire country right now is in a state of anxiety,” said military hospital psychologist Gladis Ortiz. “Some are in a perpetual state of panic, suffering from facial paralysis, tics, skin problems, diarrhea, sleeplessness, stomach pains. Children have been wetting their beds.”

President Francisco Flores called for calm in a radio address late Saturday. Many residents of the capital heard the message outside their homes, where they spent the night for fear of fresh collapses.

Private-sector groups have estimated that the quakes have caused $3 billion in damage to housing, roads, water systems and schools.

Education Minister Ana Evelyn Jacir de Lovo on Sunday announced that the public school year had been suspended until further notice.

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How to Help

These agencies are among the many accepting contributions for assistance to victims of the earthquakes in El Salvador.

American Red Cross

Mark check “El Salvador quake”

P.O. Box 97089

Washington, D.C. 20090-7089

(800) HELPNOW

https://www.redcross.org

Catholic Relief Services