Dinning Table where a family was just sitting down for lunch in San Miguel los Lotes, Guatemala (photo: AMEDICAusa)
Nothing was Unusual in San Miguel los Lotes
Zona Cero, Guatemala – A quiet, sunny, Sunday afternoon in the small Guatemalan town. The only day off for most of the villagers who commonly work sunrise to sunset six days a week, toiling in the fields of nearby fincas or tending one of the myriad Tiendas (tiny convenience stores) that dot the towns of the country. Some are just home from church, some are sleeping off Saturday’s ritual night out. Kids are playing inside and out. Dogs roam the streets. Mothers and grandmothers are setting lunch, Sunday’s main meal, on tables outside. Dominating the skyline above is Guatemala’s most active volcano, Volcán Fuego, emitting a pretty normal plume of ash and steam…
Volcán Fuego Eruption – June 3, 2018, San Miguel los Lotes (Caution: Strong images)
Gray. Just Gray.
An overwhelming monochrome moonscape strikes you as soon as you arrive. As if someone has filtered out all the color from the world and left only the slight variations of tone found in old photographs. What little color remains is muted, dusty and somehow sadder for its rarity. A child’s shoe here, a discarded plastic cup there… but not nearly enough to brighten the landscape. What few leaves remain on the scorched and dying trees are dull, drooping and grey/tan. A sudden and very hot winter has come to the land of eternal spring. At first, you see what appears to be a scattering of small houses, dusty, dirty, and empty. It is only when you look closer that you realize that you are looking at the second story, the single story residences having been completely buried.
This is, in fact, one of the chief dangers of San Miguel los Lotes now.
A Dangerous Path
There is the Volcano, of course. It remains active and new eruptions are not only possible, but likely. We have posted a lookout just in case there is any activity during our survey. We are five miles from the main vent, close enough that there is some danger. Lahars are a threat as well, but less so, since there haven’t been heavy rains in the last two or three days. Dust is less of a problem since the rains have compacted much of the finer ash that would pose a heath risk. Still, we are careful not to scuff our feet or raise more dust than we absolutely have to.
Partially excavated for access, the main street of San Miguel los Lotes (photo: AMEDICAusa)
No, the most serious risk we face at the moment is the buried, unmarked houses. Most have laminate roofs, either metal or fiberglass, not very well supported in the best of times, now carrying the load of many tons of ash and rock. Some have already collapsed, leaving sandy, crater-like depressions in the earth, adding to the feeling you are on the moon.
It would take just a little more weight, say your footstep, to collapse a roof, drop you into the void and bury you in the ash that followed.
San Miguel los Lotes Before & After Eruption (photos: DigitalGlobe)
Learning from Disaster
AMEDICAusa had, of course, been active in the disaster recovery from the day of the eruption. Messages from our friends and firefighter colleagues in Guatemala started pouring in within minutes of the event. Clearly it was much worse than the initial news reports. It became quickly evident that there was severe shortages of even the most simple of rescue and emergency medical supplies. That became our priority. Our staff and volunteers were engaged in the effort to get supplies to the shelters, hospitals and first responders for the first two weeks after the disaster.But identifying needs, arranging donations and distribution of supplies from the States is not the same as being on the ground.
To learn what was done and what wasn’t, what worked and what didn’t, I needed to go to Zona Cero.
When in Doubt, Call the Fire Department
My first call was to my long time friend, Comandante Vinicio Calderon, Chief of 32 Compañía, Bomberos Voluntarios, in Patulul. In addition to his duties as Chief of Department, Calderon serves as commander of an entire regional division of Guatemalan’s Fire Service, some 16 cities, including the area near Volcán del Fuego. Calderon was part of the command team, and intimately involved in the emergency response to the eruption.
Zona Cero is a restricted area, for many reasons, but primarily because of the dangers involved in just being there. No one is allowed in without legitimate need. CONRED (Guatemala’s version of FEMA) keeps a tight reign on access. Even with prior arrangement, it took several hours and a lot of paperwork to obtain my unrestricted pass from CONRED. (I was asked for next of kin information and to which hospital I wished to be transported as well as my normal travel documents… an ominous touch.) They do not allow media access and the press has congregated in a small, semi-permanent knot around the zone’s roadblock.
Neale Brown and Comandante Vinicio Calderon at San Miguel los Lotes (photo: 32 Cia. Bomberos Voluntarios)
On The Road
The military counts people in and out, as even with an official pass, only so many are permitted in the zone at a time. We were held at the military guard station for over an hour and were allowed in only when enough workers had exited to counter our entrance.
The first half mile of the journey into the zone from the checkpoint is eerie. There is a fine coating of ash over everything, but for the most part it looks undamaged, but deserted. Houses, stores, even cars stand ready for use, but remain empty. Occasional stray dogs wander alongside the road. I wonder who, if anyone, takes care of them. A low, gray, rocky hill in the middle of the highway marks our entry into the true Zona Cero. Beyond this point the pavement ends, covered in hundreds of thousands of tons of volcanic ash and rock. A highway crew is parked next to the buried village. They are working feverishly to reopen Ruta 14, the main highway linking western Guatemala to Antigua.
A Walk on the Moon
Accompanied by Comandante Calderon and three of his firefighters who were here during the initial response to the eruption, we climbed the ash hill into the ruins of the village. There is a smell. At first, just a faint whiff of sulfur, then the strong smell of corruption and decay. It waxes and wanes as we walk, but it is always there. An awful reminder that this is now officially a cemetery, with a great many bodies still unrecovered. The Fire Chief relates how difficult it was to abandon the recovery effort.
We walked through some of the buildings that were still accessible. A neighborhood restaurant and bar, the chairs and tables scattered and overturned. The small kitchen of a home. The shrine to Virgen de Guadalupe that somehow survived the destruction of the rest of its building. The firefighters pointed out where they were able to affect rescues, and the more numerous places where they recovered the dead. Search markings left by the responders remain on the walls of those structures above the ash. A paint mark meaning three dead found here, or more commonly, no entry, no survivors. Over there, they say, is where we recovered the children, indicating a breached cement block wall where five children were found clutching each other on a bed. I’ve seen the photograph. I won’t reproduce it here.
Firefighters deal with their burning boots at San Miguel los Lotes
It was, however, the correct decision.
.
Lessons learned and What is Needed Now?
Despite the danger, and the difficulty of the task, both mentally and physically, the firefighters didn’t want to give up. Hiking boots fell apart, the glue melting and the stitching charred by the latent heat of the debris. Gloves wore out in hours, abraded by the glass-like volcanic ash. Eyes grew red and irritated by the dust, leaking around cheap construction goggles. Coughing and sneezing from that which penetrated the masks.
Questions remain about the initial circumstances surrounding the government’s response to the disaster. The authorities were apparently meeting about whether or not to evacuate the area at the time of the eruption. This has raised something of a political firestorm, but is not related to the emergency response to the disaster after the eruption itself. By all accounts, while there were some difficulties, the fire service performed well, even heroically, in the response. There are some training issues, but the biggest problems involved equipment, or rather, the lack thereof. Boots and gloves for the responders were used up at a prodigious rate. Not designed for intense heat nor the abrasive volcanic materials what few they had were soon gone. Simple masks and goggles capable of filtering out the fine volcanic dust were in short supply.
The end of the pyroclastic flow at the furthest edge of the village. (photo: AMEDICAusa)
The Scope of the Disaster
The official toll stands at 169 fatalities, though they are only counting those victims whom they have identified. Firefighters Juan Bajxac and Antonio Castillo were killed in the eruption. Both were members of 55 Compañía CVB, Alotenango. CONRED official Juan Francisco Galindo and Police Officer Donaldo Chután Enríquez also gave their lives.
Juan Bajxac and Antonio Castillo of 55 Compañía, CVB, Alotenango, Guatemala, evacuating people from a bridge moments before their death.
Unofficially, authorities in the Guatemalan government and rescuers within Zona Cero have told us the the actual numbers are closer to 3,000 dead. Several small villages, not mapped or named, are not included. Hundreds more sustained injuries, including life threatening burns.
3,379 people remain in twelve official shelters. Thousands more being sheltered privately with family and friends.
San Miguel los Lotes has been declared a National Cemetery.
Relief Efforts Continue
The shelters for the survivors are exhausting many of their relief supplies. One shelter, the Finca de Industria in Esquintla, told me that they will run out of food on or about October 1st. They are also short of personal sanitation supplies and cleaning products. Fortunately, one of our partner organizations, Sociedad Cívico Cultural Guatemala of Chicago, Illinois, is delivering more than a truckload of supplies to the shelters this week to help ease the shortages. (Though many of the canned and dried foodstuffs they shipped have been held at the border, “until it can be determined if they are expired”. They aren’t – I helped pack a lot of them.) A lot more will be needed before the survivors can be resettled.
Plans for that are moving with glacial rapidity.