Taiwan Rushes Aid to Quake-Stricken El Salvador

Just short of noon on Saturday, January 13, most everyone in El Salvador was at home preparing for lunch when the earth below their feet suddenly began to shake violently. Just outside the capital of San Salvador, a hillside collapsed in the community of Las Colinas, burying more than 260 homes and 1,200 residents.

As of January 29, the confirmed toll from the earthquake stood at 726 dead and 4,440 injured, with 120,000 homes either totally or partially destroyed and more than 980,000 left homeless.

Over 600 aftershocks have hit El Salvador since January 13. The difficulty of emergency rescue efforts has been greatly exacerbated by collapsed road surfaces and interrupted power, water, and telephone services. President Carlos Flores declared a state of emergency, called for an all-out effort to save lives, and asked for international relief assistance.

Hell on earth

Relief teams and supplies began arriving from around the world on the day after the quake. In addition to teams from nearby Mexico, Guatemala, and Venezuela, a Spanish team also arrived very quickly, followed soon thereafter by counterparts from Panama, Nicaragua, Germany, France, and Turkey. The Taipei City Government's international search and rescue team arrived on January 16.

This team, which had received three months of training in the US last year, went immediately into action after their long air trip, as the search and rescue command center in El Salvador arranged for it to head to Las Colinas, where the worst of the disaster had taken place. The team started out using advanced equipment capable of detecting signs of life under the rubble, including flexible fiber optic video cables and ultra-sensitive audio devices. When these methods did not yield survivors, the team began digging and using more aggressive search techniques. These methods, too, failed to turn up any sign of life. At that point relief teams went into Las Colinas with bulldozers and mechanical shovels to clear out the rubble and retrieve the bodies of the dead.

In his condolence message to El Salvador, ROC President Chen Shui-bian stated that the people of Taiwan, having suffered a terrible earthquake of their own in September 1999, were acutely aware of what people in El Salvador were going through. In addition to the relief assistance provided by the ROC government, a lot of aid also poured forth from the private sector. The ROC Red Cross Society donated 10,000 blankets and 400 tents. The Chinese Children's Fund is planning to send US$300,000 in private donations via the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to provide support for 2,000 children. The governments of Taichung County and Nantou County, which were hardest hit by the 1999 earthquake in Taiwan, also made big contributions to the relief effort. Teams from these areas arrived in El Salvador armed with experience, an advanced global positioning system, and tunneling equipment. They also donated tents and other necessities.

In the dark days following Taiwan's September 1999 earthquake, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies donated US$27,890,000 to Taiwan, and these funds proved a tremendous help in our reconstruction effort. International relief teams worked around the clock to find survivors, and thousands made homeless by the quake sheltered from the cold in donated tents and sleeping bags. Even the dead in many cases were transported to their final resting places in donated body bags and coffins. Now that a similar disaster has been visited upon one of our diplomatic partners, it is time for the ROC to repay its debt to the international community.

The power of nature

Major earthquakes in recent years have claimed nearly 20,000 lives in Turkey and over 2,500 in Taiwan. The death toll in El Salvador is expected to climb to over 1,300.

In the meantime, the Richter 7.9 earthquake in India's western state of Gujarat has completely leveled the town of Bhuj, and official sources expect the death toll to exceed 20,000. While relief teams have been dispatched from around the world, India indicated that it would not need assistance from Taiwan for the time being.

There is nothing anyone can do to prevent earthquakes from occurring, but specialists have noted that the consequences of the recent quakes were made worse by man-made factors, such as overpopulation, environmental degradation, and shoddy construction.

El Salvador is the most densely populated nation in Central America, with some 6 million people living in a territory covering over 20,000 square kilometers (about two-thirds the size of Taiwan). The economy has been developing briskly ever since the country's long civil war came to an end in 1992, and El Salvador plays an important political role both internationally and in the Central American region. In these respects, El Salvador's situation is very similar to that of Taiwan.

Overdevelopment of the hillside at Las Colinas may have been one cause of the landslide that buried the residential neighborhood down below. After one has seen so many dead bodies and heard the anguished wailing of bereaved relatives, it is hard to ignore the wisdom of calls to live in harmony with nature.

It takes a very long time to recover from an earthquake. After the search and rescue operations have come to an end, reconstruction begins. This is a massive undertaking that never proceeds quickly. In a message to the international community, President Flores stated, "I hope that relief assistance has not come to an end. It should continue as we work on reconstruction." If anyone in Taiwan wishes to contribute to reconstruction in El Salvador, they are urged to contact the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' task force on reconstruction (tel: 02-2348-2192 or 02-2348-2195).

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El Salvador was hit by a strong earthquake. Most of the deaths (549) were the result of a landslide in Las Colinas, on the outskirts of San Salvador. (photo by John Moore, courtesy of Associated Press)