Saturday May 24st. at 2:20 p.m. everything was moving and I couldn't believe what I was experiencing. The curtains, the TV, the bed, everything was moving from one side to the other one. My reaction was to stand up under the door (I heard that was a safe place) and then I remembered "correctly" that under the door is the worst place. My second reaction was to start laughing, I guess, that was how I expressed my fear. I went back to my laptop to check on the Internet any “immediate” news.
Few minutes later it was all over the news. It was measured as a 5.6 in magnitude and the epicenter was located about 33 miles from Bogotá. That was not a nice feeling at all! I didn’t even think about my daughter Mafe; forget about relatives or friends. I called Mafe like an hour later to ask if she was ok. She was by herself in a 6th floor apartment building scared to death and her dad didn’t call her! A brave man! Hummm Don’t think so.
Millions went to the streets waiting for replicas and fearing a worst shake. At least 6 people were killed.
At midweek CDA decided to go to a small town in the middle of the mountains where 60% of the homes were destroyed. We prepared groceries, personal care items and a health brigade and went on the next Saturday. We were 36 in total including 4 doctors, 1 dentist, psychologists, social workers, chaplains and security in 6 cars and one ambulance. It was raining the whole morning and that made the situation look worst for the habitants in the small town of
We arrived around 7:00 a.m., had a sandwich for breakfast and left around 4:00 p.m. starving and ready to kill a cow for lunch. We stop at a town called Caqueza and ate like animals.
It was an experience that made me think about how we are not ready in case of a disaster. How helpless you are in some situations where you can’t do anything, absolutely nothing. For the very first time I missed
