LDS aid getting to Latin America

With bridges out and roads buried, the relief effort mounted last week by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Latin America was circuitous and bumpy. But by week's end, thousands of food boxes and hygiene kits had been delivered to people left hungry and homeless by Hurricane Stan.

In Guatemala, the effort turned into a relay operation. Working with local governments and other groups, local church volunteers handed off tons of food from distribution centers to trucks to people who waded across rivers, reports Garry R. Flake, director of humanitarian emergency response in the church's Welfare Services Department.

Flake returned to Salt Lake City Saturday after heading up a relief response that began Oct. 8 in Guatemala City, where the church flew in 80 tons of oil, rice, beans, sugar and flour because supplies had been made scarce by the heavy rains and landslides.

Fifty tons of the food were transferred immediately to the Guatemalan government's disaster agency; the other 30 tons were distributed to church buildings providing emergency shelter to both church and community members.

With more than 200 mudslides in the region, the food and clothing distribution took roundabout routes, Flake said in media interviews Monday. Church leaders made arrangements with Aero Club, a Guatemalan association of pilots and small-plane owners, to help ferry the supplies to storm victims. The planes delivered small loads to drop-off points where members of nearby LDS congregations waited with trucks to take the boxes to remote areas.

When the going got too rough, supplies were carried on shoulders and strapped around waists. Flake has a picture of one man dangling above a river as he is hoisted by rope to a village on the other side.

"There was such a sweet feeling of service," Flake said, adding that some landslide victims expressed concern about the American victims of hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

In El Salvador, the problem was flooding but the needs were the same: food and clothing. As they had in Guatemala City, church members in the region set up a facility to process clothes and box up food, which was purchased in San Salvador.

The church also distributed 6,000 food boxes in the southern Mexican city of Tapachula, in the state of Chiapas. There, rains caused a river to change its course, flooding homes.

In Guatemala, El Salvador and Mexico, the church provided emergency housing to more than 3,000 people in some 35 church buildings. Although some people have now been allowed to return home, about 1,200 people are still housed in 18 buildings in Guatemala and El Salvador, he said.

Flake has spent much of 2005 spearheading the church's relief responses to natural disasters, beginning with the tsunami in Indonesia and Sri Lanka, and later to hurricanes Katrina and Rita along the Gulf Coast. He has also traveled to five countries in Africa, delivering food and medical supplies.

Currently the church is working on its response to the massive earthquake in Pakistan and India, assessing how it can best help, he said.

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E-mail: jarvik@desnews.com