A New Start After a Great Tragedy
It happened on 15 August 2007 around 18h30; a day Doris will never
forget.
In the midst of preparing dinner for her family she felt the
floor shake under her feet. "My husband told me to grab the
baby, but when we tried to get out of the house the door was
stuck," Doris recalls.
The worst of the earthquake that killed 590 persons in Peru and
destroyed more than 52,000 homes was yet to come.
In those brief seconds when the earth stopped moving Doris
followed her husband's advice and took refuge under the bed with
the baby, while her husband tried to pry the door open.
Seconds later it began again, this time with a vengeance.
Doris and her family finally managed to leave the house and
ended up on the street along with all of their neighbors. "We stood
in the middle of the street; the shaking got worse by the
second. We tried to make our way to my mother-in-law's house;
but the light posts had been uprooted and were lying on the
streets. Pisco was like a war zone," she continues.
Two minutes after Doris' dinner was interrupted, the shaking
stopped.
But the calm did not bring tranquility to the
neighborhood. "People kept running by saying that the ocean
had retreated and that we had to evacuate," Doris continues.
"We headed towards a hill and slept on the ground under the stars,
we didn't even have a blanket."
Because it all happened so fast and at dusk, Doris had not seen
the state of her home, but she was expecting the worse. When
her husband returned late that evening to get some blankets, he
found only half the home standing and debris everywhere.
More surprises were in store for Doris and her family.
"Next morning we woke up and realized we had slept next to a
garbage dump," shudders Doris. "We went back to our town, San
Andres, to check on my mother and saw that the ocean had spat rocks
and boats everywhere. It was a mess."
Doris and her family slept outside for a few nights, until a
neighbor told her about a shelter that had been set up in a
stadium. But the conditions in the shelter were not much
better; and they feared for their health and safety.
"My son got sick and had bronchitis, and my husband lost his job
because the factory where he worked had collapsed. Anyways,
he would not leave us alone in that shelter," Doris adds.
But the family never lost hope.
The municipality of San Andres allocated a plot of land for 100
families to live temporarily. So ever so slowly, Doris and
her neighbors began picking up the pieces, literally, of their
lives.
An IOM assessment team determined the most urgent needs of the
residents and began distributing tents, beds, mattresses, blankets,
kitchen set and other basic items. IOM staff set up 504
tents, distributed 3,300 mattresses, 1,168 beds, 2,988 blankets,
916 sheets, 341 kitchen sets, and 326 personal hygiene
kits.
"We are so much better now. The children have gone back to
school and have no health problems, and my husband is back at
work. So, little by little, everything is going back to
normal," explains Doris with a sigh of relief.
The San Andres District in Pisco province was one of the worst
affected by the earthquake
Read more about IOM's emergency assistance to Peruvians affected
by the earthquake: