Ruben Sebulbeda hugs his little 18 month granddaughter Anina to his chest. Just like he did a week ago. When the earthquake struck Chile on Saturday, February 28th, in the dead of night, he woke up. Everything in his little house in the village of Santa Clara had fallen on the floor. Ruben Sebulbda and ...
I was visiting parts of my diocese the day before the earthquake. To get to one place I had to cross a lot of rivers. As we crossed one the water was “bubbling” and there were waves. We decided to stay that night at the diocesan training centre in Matean which is near the sea. ...
Life since the 2007 Mexico floods has been a learning curve for Hugo Gutierrez. He said Caritas Tabasco’s small team was almost overwhelmed when the disaster happened. After the floods Mr Gutierrez did emergency response training to ensure that if the floods ever came again, people would be better protected. “We learned about how to ...
In the beginning of September 2008, Haiti was hit by two hurricanes which killed thousands, left tens of thousands homeless, and threatened the lives and livelihoods of millions more. Mudslides and flooded rivers buried entire towns beneath as much as 15 feet of water and left over 15 million cubic meters of mud behind. Haiti ...
Soft spoken and demure, Junor Hesgazons leans intently into his schoolwork, his eyes casting constantly to the chalkboard as the day’s lesson takes shape. His white collared shirt neatly creased despite the humidity of southern Haiti, Hesgazons looks every bit the engineer he hopes one day to be. “I like to study engineering. I like ...
Rolande Jean’s home sits a few feet from the edge of the Caribbean Sea, between the small town of Nippes, Haiti and, in September 2008, directly in the path of Hurricane Ike. When the Category 4 storm roared ashore, Jean huddled with her husband and children in their small wooden house, and bore the brunt ...
When was Haiti last in the news? You’ll probably have to wrack your brains before remembering that it last made the headlines in September 2008 when a series of tropical storms caused massive flooding and mudslides. Five months later, NGOs are wrapping up their emergency programmes and pulling out. No news on Haiti and the ...
Caritas representatives will be talking part in both the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland and the World Social Forum (WSF) in Belem, Brazil this January. In a world divided between the “Haves” and “Have-nots”, Caritas believes the global system must be reformed to give all of society the opportunity to succeed. The Caritas ...