Boulders litter Verapaz, El Salvador, following heavy rains that triggered landslides last weekend. Photo by Tjarda Muller
Oxfam America’s Tjarda Muller lives in El Salvador where torrential rains last weekend caused widespread damage. She visited one of the hardest-hit communities, Verapaz, yesterday. Listen to her report: VoiceMessage1
A resident searches for victims under a collapsed hotel in Padang on Indonesia's Sumatra island. Photo by Reuters/Crack Palinggi, courtesy of www.alertnet.org
At a powwow here this morning, fund-raisers, press officers, and writers—not quite believing the cascade of bad news–huddled over the headlines sprawled across a table in one of the cubicles: “Quakes Ravage Sumatra and Samoas,” said one.
“Tsunami Came Too Fast for Warnings to Reach All,” said another.
“Typhoon Eases, Leaving More Than 300 Dead,” said a third.
And this one, which summed up the shock of it all best: “Week of Tragedy for Asia.”
It’s a week that has left us here at Oxfam racing to help meet the needs of some of the countless people who have seen their homes crash down around them following the earthquake that hit Sumatra, their villages flattened by the tsunami that swept into Samoa and Tonga, and all that’s familiar washed away in the flooding unleashed by Typhoon Ketsana as it roared across the Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. Read the rest of this entry »
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