A United Brotherhood Unshaken

BY AWAKE! WRITER IN EL SALVADOR

AT 11:34 ON THE MORNING OF JANUARY 13, 2001, AN EARTHQUAKE MEASURING 7.6 ON THE RICHTER SCALE SHOOK THE LENGTH OF EL SALVADOR AND WAS FELT FROM PANAMA TO MEXICO. FEW WILL EVER FORGET WHAT THEY WERE DOING AT THE MOMENT IT HIT.

“WHEN the worst of the shaking subsided, we looked up and saw the tip of the mountain split, and then it seemed to freeze for a few seconds,” remembers Miriam Quezada. “My daughter screamed, ‘Mama! Run! Run!’” Then the face of the mountain slid off and tumbled toward them. About 500 lives were snuffed out in the Las Colinas community of Nueva San Salvador, or Santa Tecla, and some 300 houses were obliterated.

“I had just left home and was waiting at the bus stop when the earthquake struck,” recounts Roxana Sánchez. “When the shaking stopped, I helped a lady pick up her bags and thought, ‘I’d better go back home because my family will be worried about me.’” When Roxana turned the corner, she saw that her street ended abruptly at the foot of a mountain of dirt. Her house was gone!

Providing Immediate Help

The total number of Witnesses in El Salvador is over 28,000, and thousands live in the disaster zone—the area along the Salvadoran coast. Although still reeling from their own trauma, many quickly began focusing on the needs of others. Mario Suarez, a traveling overseer of Jehovah’s Witnesses serving in Santa Tecla, relates: “About an hour after the earthquake, I received a call for help. Some Christian brothers and sisters were said to be trapped in their houses. A group of volunteers were immediately mobilized.

“We thought that maybe some walls had fallen and that it was just a matter of removing rubble and making a passageway so that those who were trapped could get out. But none of us could have imagined the magnitude of the disaster. In fact, when we arrived at the site, we asked where the houses were. To our horror, we were told that we were standing on them! The houses were buried up to the second story in nine feet [3 m] of earth. It was devastating!”

As the afternoon hours passed, approximately 250 Witnesses from neighboring congregations poured into the area to help. With only picks, shovels, plastic pans, and bare hands, the volunteers desperately tried to reach the survivors. Very few, however, were rescued alive in Santa Tecla. Among the hundreds who perished—asphyxiated or crushed under tons of earth—were five of Jehovah’s Witnesses.

A Second Major Quake

On February 13, 2001, at 8:22 in the morning, one month after the first quake, a second earthquake struck the center of El Salvador, registering a magnitude of 6.6 on the Richter scale. Once again, rescue and relief efforts by Jehovah’s Witnesses went into high gear. An elder named Noé Iraheta explained: “Each Congregation Book Study conductor went to look for the Witnesses assigned to his group to make sure that they were all safe.”

The cities of San Vicente and Cojutepeque and their outskirts were hit hard. The towns of San Pedro Nonualco, San Miguel Tepezontes, and San Juan Tepezontes were in ruins. In Candelaria, Cuscatlán, where the destruction was almost total, a parochial school collapsed, killing more than 20 children. Salvador Trejo, a local Witness, recounts: “About an hour later, I heard a voice from the street calling, ‘Brother Trejo!’ At first, I couldn’t see anything for the dust. Then, suddenly, the Witnesses from Cojutepeque appeared. They had come to see how we were!”

Neighboring congregations again became organized to provide necessities for victims of this second disaster. They followed the first-century example of Christians in Macedonia who begged for the privilege of giving, although they were in need themselves. For example, those in the congregations in the city of Santiago Texacuangos, who had suffered great losses during the first earthquake, prepared hot food to take to their brothers in nearby San Miguel Tepezontes.

Altogether, it is estimated, over 1,200 people perished in the earthquakes in El Salvador, and an additional eight were reportedly killed in neighboring Guatemala.

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The landslide caused by the earthquake buried more than 300 houses in Las Colinas

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Bottom of pages 23-5: Courtesy El Diario de Hoy

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The villagers used picks, shovels, and buckets in their rescue work

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Courtesy of La Prensa Gráfica (photograph by Milton Flores/Alberto Morales/Félix Amaya)