Clearing quake debris still the main focus of life in Peruvian towns

Published: 2007-10-05

PISCO, Peru (CNS) -- Six weeks after an earthquake flattened 80 percent of the adobe brick homes in Pisco, the town on the Pacific coast 140 miles south of Lima, had only recently started to rumble consistently with the more welcome sound of heavy equipment hauling away tons of rubble. The otherwise flat terrain around Pisco was growing new hills, composed of broken adobe bricks, scraps of roofing material, windows, furniture and other unsalvageable remains of what had been a city of 116,000 people before the magnitude 8 earthquake on Aug. 15. Caritas Peru, the Catholic Church's relief organization, reported a national death toll from the quake of 519 people, with another 1,800 injured. More than 70,000 homes were destroyed, and 33,000 more were damaged. Pisco, Ica, Chincha, San Clemente, San Andres and other shattered towns shake with seismic aftershocks only rarely now. Instead, their narrow roads tremble with the vibrations of bulldozers and dump trucks hauling away debris. But earthquake cleanup and repair are pretty much the only activity in town. Many of the farms and fishing boats that normally provide jobs in one of the poorest regions of Peru still sat idle in late September. The farmers and fishermen who eventually will repair them had first to focus on getting their damaged homes in order, explained Walter Blake of Catholic Relief Services in Peru, the U.S. church's overseas aid agency and part of Caritas Internationalis, a confederation of Catholic relief agencies. Eighty percent of the fishing boats in the nearby town of San Andres were put out of commission, he said.

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