November 2005:
- Volcano's eruption displaced 65,000
people.
- 30,000 people remain in shelters. Their homes destroyed, they now await placement in government-built, semi-permanent structures.
- Half of the coffee crop is destroyed; many people now jobless.
Northwest Medical Teams is funding programs in 11 shelters in the Santa Ana region. With 30,000 people living in schools and other temporary shelters, children are unable to continue classes and tensions can run high.
The El Salvador government is providing shelter and health care, medical staff, and basic grains (beans, corn for tortillas).
Our local partner, ASAPROSAR, is using our funding to provide:
- necessary vitamins and minerals for pregnant women.
- medications and antibiotics necessary in community shelters where people live in close contact.
- vitamins and nutritious snacks for children.
- psychosocial programs for teens and children, using art and theater to process the recent trauma.
- employment and training for older teens, teaching them how to help younger children by using these programs.
Background: volunteer team trains villages pre-eruption
Santa Ana, El Salvador -- The El Salvador to Portland, Ore., e-mail arrived Sept. 12. The Santa Ana volcano, also known as Ilamatepec, could blow any time.
The highest of El Salvador's string of volcanic peaks, this volcano had the potential to displace or harm 10,000 people living in the area -- from the city of Santa Ana to people in remote villages on the volcano's slopes.
The Salvadoran Association for Rural Health (ASAPROSAR) had worked with Northwest Medical Teams on many occasions, from cataract surgery teams to training local community health workers to running children's ministry programs. So when El Salvador's Comisión Nacional de Emergencías (CNE, similar to the United States FEMA) asked ASAPROSAR to lead evacuation efforts, they asked if Northwest Medical Teams would send a team to prepare the city and villages for disaster.
Sept. 17: Forming the team
A two-man volunteer team from Northwest Medical Teams flew into Santa Ana: Gregg Kendrick of Hornby Island, B.C., and Joseph Troncoso, Jr. of Gresham, Ore.
Kendrick, a 46-year-old fire chief with extensive background as an emergency medic and a member of Great Britain's Registered Engineers for Disaster Relief (RedR), had been to El Salvador before. He'd worked in Baghdad, helped with environmental cleanup in Indonesia, and worked on an agricultural project in Mexico. "I learn best when faced with that which is new to me," he said.
He paired well with Troncoso, an EMT and fire science instructor who speaks Spanish fluently. Troncoso, on the Portland-Guadalajara Delegation, has traveled extensively throughout Latin America .
Sept. 19-30: Preparing for disaster
While Mike Wenrick, team coordinator at the Northwest Medical Teams headquarters in Tigard, Ore., stayed in daily contact with the Cascades Volcano Observatory (CVO) to monitor the volcano activity, Kendrick, Troncoso and ASAPROSAR staff began working with CNE, as well as Santa Ana military, police, firefighters and Red Cross International.
- Within Santa Ana: With the city just eight miles from the volcano, Kendrick, Troncoso and ASAPROSAR staff conducted training for first responder and urban search and rescue, as well as helped coordinate a large-scale evacuation plan.
- On the volcano: Many villages on the mountain had no road access. Kendrick and Troncoso took buses as far as they would go, then hiked. Pulling the smartest students from the rural schools, they gave them reflective vests, flashlights and basic wilderness first aid training. Each student took pictorial brochures for their villages, depicting the transportation system for evacuation.
Every community leader was connected with government officials monitoring the volcano. With an air horn relay system in place to sound the warning from the city up through the villages, everyone knew that a sounding horn meant business.
They heard that horn Saturday, Oct. 1.
Oct. 1-8: Evacuation successful
Heavy rains from Hurricane Stan didn't help. Earthquakes from the eruption caused landslides. Though most of the molten lava exited the volcano on the opposite side from Santa Ana, ash covered the city. Smoke choked men, women and children as they hurried to their evacuation sites in schools, stadiums, warehouses and churches.