Colombia Asks For More Aid
Emergency food supplies are dangerously low for the more than 200,000 people left homeless by last week's earthquake in Colombia, authorities said Tuesday.
The officials said private donations were dropping off precipitously, and appealed for more aid to fill the gap between what Colombians need and what the government and international relief agencies have rushed in.
Aid officials were trying to avoid a repeat of the first few days after the Jan. 25 earthquake, when food shortages were widespread due to the magnitude of the devastation and bureaucratic delays. Frustration over those shortages fueled waves of looting.
"We have food for four or five more days," said Juan Manuel Urrutia, head of the Colombian Institute for Family Well-Being, a government agency. "We're working to avoid a food crisis."
The highest priority for aid are children, he said. About 25,000 children were receiving milk and basic foodstuffs in Quindio - the state most severely affected by the magnitude-6 earthquake.
The U.N. World Food Program was distributing about 25,000 food rations packets a day, he said. And a plane from Italy stocked with portable kitchen gear, generators and $200,000 worth of beans was expected at Armenia's airport on Tuesday.
Despite strong foreign donations, Urrutia said the cash-strapped Colombian government would have to begin purchasing food, in part to make up for a falloff in donations by private Colombians.
At the central donation center in Bogota, where as many as 6,000 people arrived daily to donate supplies during the first days after the quake, only 400 showed up Monday with boxes and shopping bags of food.
Earthquake survivors need to get enough calories not only to survive but to return to work or begin rebuilding their shattered homes.
Defense Minister Rodrigo Lloreda said Tuesday the government was providing 30,000 meals a day and would increase that to 70,000 by the end of the week. "There's no concern about food," he told reporters in Armenia, calling the current four-to-five day stock a normal margin.
About 10,000 Armenia residents had fled to Bogota, helping to relieve social pressures in the quake-ravaged city, Lloreda said.
Wrecking crews knocked down more damaged buildings Tuesday, and Lloreda said the government was looking to hire earthquake victims to take part in the reconstruction, providing them with a needed source of income.
It will cost as much as $950 million to rebuild and repair the estimated 35,000 homes rendered uninhabitable by the earthquake, two-thirds of them in Armenia, Colombia's planning director Jaime Ruiz said Tuesday.
More than 600 people were killed in the state capital, Armenia, a city of 300,000 residents that now is largely in ruins. Calarca, a town 15 minutes from Armenia, had at least 110 deaths in the earthquake and more than 200 people were killed elsewhere in the coffee-growing region
Written by Vivian Sequera.
©1999 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed