Remembering the Peru Earthquake, One Year Later

August 15, 2007:  It had been little more than a month since El Fotografo, El Hijo and I had packed up the contents of our 4-bedroom house in Florida, stuffed it all in a shipping container bound for Callao, and hopped on a plane to EF’s hometown of Lima.

Everything in Peru’s capital was new and strange to El Hijo and I, then — and to EF as well, since he hadn’t lived in Peru for 25 years. The food, the climate, the traffic, the language — just stepping out of the front door each morning was an adventure, not always an easy one.

For several weeks we had been staying in a friend’s second-floor apartment in Miraflores, right across from the Church of Our Lady of Carmel. Each morning we’d watch the school children in their brown Carmelitas uniforms file into the round door across the street, their mothers and nannies waving to them from the curb.  We could hear the children’s shouts from the school gymnasium as we ate lunch in our tiny living room/dining room.

Below our friend’s apartment is a corner bodega, where all day long customers stop in to buy snacks, sodas, cigarettes, and to gossip.

The store’s candies are behind glass, and you have to ask the cashier for them. It was around this time that EH became motivated to learn Spanish. “Una Kindersupresa, por favor?”

On Wednesday, August 15, at around 6:30 p.m., El Hijo and I were sitting on his bed, playing a game with a stuffed Scottie dog we’d bought at Wong. El Fotografo was in the other bedroom, typing up a presentation for a job interview with the UN in Peru. He had applied for a job in disaster planning, a career path he’d pursued in the United States during the 1980s and ’90s.

Just as EF was typing the word “earthquake” (yes), the walls of the apartment began to shake.

First I heard glass rattling. ‘That’s weird,’ I thought.

Then I became aware that the bed was shaking, too — the floor was shaking. It was a bad rattling sound.

“Earthquake!” EF shouted. “Run downstairs.”

EH grabbed all the stuffed animals he had brought from the U.S., and we ran down the narrow hall stairway to the street below, with EF behind us. An older man and his grandson, who were living in the apartment across from us, stood hesitantly on the upstairs mezzanine, confused.

“Come down!” EF shouted.

They followed, dazedly.

The little boy was clutching a red plastic dinosaur.

The walls were shaking all around us.

Outside in the street the streetlights were on; cars had stopped in mid-traffic across from the Carmelitas church.  Against the black sky, a strange orange haze haloed the tops of buildings and trees.

We stood in the middle of the street, in our stockinged feet, and felt the asphalt road ripple under us in long waves. We had forgotten to put on shoes. El Hijo held my hand tightly. He wasn’t crying.

“What’s happening?” he asked. His teeth were chattering.

“Just stay calm,” said EF, a veteran of the 1970 Peru earthquake, which killed 70,000 people. “It will be over with soon.”

It kept going.

I waited for windows and buildings to fall but they didn’t. Some women were on their knees on the sidewalk, praying, “Dios!” The world undulated.

Then it stopped.

For four days after the 8.0 earthquake, we kept getting tremors in Lima.

“Welcome to Peru,” El Fotografo said.

We learned that Pisco and Chincha and other towns in southern Peru had been devastated by the quake. About 40,000 buildings had been destroyed. More than 600 people were dead.  

We, on Peru’s central coast, had been lucky.

One year after the disaster, much of south Peru still lies in ruins. Many people still live in temporary housing. Reconstruction is proceeding very slowly, with some fingers pointing at President Alan Garcia, others at corrupt local politicians.

Update 8/16/08: Thousands of Peruvians took to the streets on the one-year-anniversary of the quake, to protest the government’s inadequate response to the disaster.

In Chincha banners carried by protests “called for President Alan Garcia to tell the truth about where the $382m supposedly spent on the reconstruction had gone, and why so many people had still not received compensation to rebuild their homes,” reports the BBC.

“At this rate, reconstruction will last 10 years and a generation of our citizens, of our children, will be raised in inequality because they live in huts and have nowhere to study,” said the governor of Ica province, Romulo Triveno.

[Note that the governor blames Garcia’s administration, while Garcia blames Triveno’s buddies for the slow rate of reconstruction. Echoes of the post-Katrina blame game, to this American expat’s ears.]

For various perspectives on Peru’s Earthquake, One Year Later, visit:

BBC Online, “Thousands Join Peru Quake Protest” (Aug. 15, 2008)

The Economist, “Lessons from an Earthquake” (Aug. 14, 2008)

Andina, “Peru & APEC Flags Fly at Half Mast for Earthquake Victims” (Aug. 15, 2008)

Reuters, “Peruvians Protest, Mourn on Anniversary of Quake” (Aug. 15, 2008)

Want to be part of the solution? Help Peru rebuilt by donating funds or your time to an ongoing relief effort:

Idealist.org, “Volunteer Opportunities in Pisco/Peru Earthquake Relief” (Aug. 15, 2008)

Online Fundraising Blog, “Irish-Peruvian Fusion Raises Funds for Peru Earthquake Victims” (Aug. 15, 2008)

The Three Jacks, “The Three Jacks Peru Tour” (Aug. 10, 2008) — contribute to funding for medical centers in Pisco and Chincha