On Saturday the 13th of January 2001, a fatal earthquake with a strength of 7,6 on the Richter scale hit El Salvador.

I attended a meeting at the Don Bosco University (UDB). Baltasar Diaz, head of the technical studies this university, had invited me. Being the coordinator of the regional project of the German technical cooperation in the area of orthoses and prosthesis and being part of the teaching staff at the UDB there was a double reason for me to be there.

Two major earthquakes leveled many structures, including this pharmacy.

There were 25 of us in a rather small meeting room. At 11.40 I felt the floor trembling and a few seconds later all of us were getting out of the building (in a rather orderly manner as I remembered later).

Being out there on the car park I all of a sudden thought of my wife and my little daughter who had planned to go to an amusement park above the city that morning. The only way to get there was via cable-driven funicular gondolas. My heart almost froze at thinking of them in these little boxes hanging on a rather fragile cable.

In the meantime cars were jumping like rubber balls on the carpark and buildings, telephone masts and trees moved like being shaken by a giant hand. Time seemed to stand still. We held each other in order not to fall to the ground. And then the longest 45 seconds of my life were over.

Damage from the earthquakes is widespread.

Not so my horrors cause for another 50 minutes I could not establish any contact with my wife. When I finally held them in my arms we thanked god and felt that we had been given a new chance in live.

Not so almost 1500 people who died buried under a huge amount of earth, stones and dust in the suburban area of Santa Tecla just about two miles from my home. (Lots of them still missing and this place might be their grave as it is almost impossible to move these huge amounts of rubble.) One of our graduates, Carlos Elias, lost at this place his wife and daughter, leaving him only with his son who survived the landslide like a miracle.

As time advanced horror grew. Not only the urban area had been shaken this time (as in 1986), but almost the whole country and even the neighboring counties Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Costa Rica. But the epicenter had been near the coast of El Salvador. As I learned in the next few hours there had been considerable damages especially in the eastern parts of the country.

Many of the patients need orthoses, including fracture braces.

The next day we had an emergency meeting with all the GTZ project directors in El Salvador. We agreed to form two teams and to explore the most badly damaged areas ourselves to get an idea of how to employ the immediate help promised by the German government.

So on Monday Dr. Kaschiske, Dr Gonzalez and I traveled to the department of Usulutan one of the areas most badly hit by the disaster. In the capital of the department, Usulutan City, we first visited the national hospital "San Pedro". Even without being a civil engineer I could tell that the 29-year-old building had been damaged so badly that it will have to be demolished.

The patients had been evacuated and were being attended in tents set up on a sports ground next to the hospital. To be able to attend the thousands of families hit by the disaster the hospital will need extra medicaments, water, food, equipment for surgery, blankets and hospital clothes as well as mobile power plants.

Salvadorans are caring for the injured in temporary structures when the hospitals have been destroyed.

Our next station was Santiago de Maria where about 60 % of the buildings had been damaged, especially the beautiful old adobe buildings. The local hospital, a relatively modern building, had resisted quite well and was able to attend its patients though additional material will be required there as well.

On the way to Berlin, a town founded by German immigrants, we could see destruction all the way long: Especially adobe buildings had collapsed wherever we got. Adobe is the traditional material for building in rural areas in El Salvador and nowadays is used especially by poor people as they can produce it themselves.

The beautiful nature in this coffee-growing area stood in a bizarre contrast to the destruction wherever we got. The local emergency committees both in Santiago de Maria and Berlin seemed to be very well organized and had already a list of materials needed most: Food and medicaments, blankets and warm clothes (Berlin is at almost 3000 feet above sea level), construction materials, and hygienic articles.

Many adobe buildings, often built by poorer citizens, have been destroyed by the tremors.

On our way back to the capital city San Salvador we found more destruction wherever we passed. As many people live in very small villages, we feared that lots of damage would only be detected within the course of the next days and weeks especially, as many roads had been blocked by landslides and complete areas had been cut of. We got back to San Salvador decided more than ever to act as quick as possible to do some relieve action for the thousands of damaged people.

One week later with a lot of relief work done and thousands of tons of emergency material already brought into the country the number of damaged houses and people continues to grow. The official numbers now are 146 000 homes destroyed and 750 000 people left homeless. Only 10 % of them are being attended in camps, some have found a place with friends and family, but most of them just have some plastic to protect them of the burning sun of the day and the cold of the night.

So there is still no time to rest. But even when the most basic needs will be covered there's a lot of work ahead: 4000 injured people are still in hospitals. Many of them will need permanent help as vital functions have been damaged.

Hundreds of thousands are now homeless and surviving as best they can.

Therefore we call upon all people to show solidarity and be generous to help the poor but hard working-people of El Salvador in their struggle to rebuild their country.

Aggressive reconstruction projects have already begun, but it will take the Salvadorans a long time to rebuild the infrastructure of this beautiful country.

Thank you very much!

Heinz Trebbin
Coordinator of the Project
"Strengthening of the Orthopedic Technology in Central America"

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