Floods, Hurricanes, Earthquakes, Volcanic Eruptions and the Poor

On September 22, the initial flooding reports came to my inbox regarding flooding in San Salvador the capital of El Salvador. A friend's blog informed me that three people were killed and 490 were in shelters. The country continues to feel natural disasters such as another hurricane, an earthquake measuring 5.8 on the Richter scale and a volcanic eruption with continued threats. Currently 70,000 people or 1% of the population is in shelters throughout the country, which is slightly smaller than Massachusetts. El Salvador is no stranger to earthquakes. Monday was the 19th anniversary of the 1986 earthquake which left more than one thousand Salvadorans dead and ten thousand wounded.

How can a people cope? Does hope remain? My heart breaks for the Salvadorans. According to the CIA World Factbook, El Salvador has many natural hazards. It is known as the Land of Volcanoes; frequent and sometimes very destructive earthquakes and volcanic activity; extremely susceptible to hurricanes. These ‘hazards’ are part of the fabric of the Salvadoran life. Disasters are a part of life. There is always something to clean up after or something to worry about. This is a consistent, continual life and death struggle.

El Salvador is another instance of the poor being pushed onto land that is dangerous and prone to natural disasters. Over the past months I have began to see the unfair land distribution that continues to marginalize peoples. In history text books, I’ve read about Europeans displacing Native Americans, but I never connected the land issue to today.