ARTICLES
Brookfield Institute to Provide Trauma Healing for Chilean Earthquake Victims article continued
Other organizations will provide the desperately needed shelter, food and water needed for physical healing.
And Centro Shalom will provide the trauma healing.
The nine newly certified trauma workers from Centro Shalom, the Brookfield Institute’s Chilean partner, are already helping heal the emotional and spiritual wounds that are all too rampant after a disaster, particularly in children.
When the quake stuck, the workers were in the mountains at Centro Shalom, leading a retreat to teach others about first aid for trauma — both physical and emotional trauma.
As they slept, the first shock of the earthquake rumbled across the mountains, knocking some people out of bed. They banded together to check on neighbors, equipped with lanterns, water, food and first aid. Assured everyone was OK, they began the trek down the mountain, carrying supplies and ready to face what lay ahead.
They traveled to Talca, the city with the highest death toll at this writing, immediately putting their training to work as they cared for families without homes, or those who had lost loved ones. The Centro Shalom staff has continued to reach out to traumatized communities across Chile.
One young woman wrote: “”I am grateful for the workshop in trauma healing. I have been inspired to help many people in these days. The course and the leadership has served me well. I have applied everything that I learned. Without a doubt, many people will need this help in the days to come.”
At the Brookfield Institute, we plan to continue and extend our work in trauma healing in Chile through Centro Shalom, a peace and environmental education camp sponsored by the Pentecostal Church of Chile and our partner for 10 years.
How can you help?
$25 Training manual for one person
$50 Training costs for one person
$200 Transportation, and resources cost for one hour workshops in “first aid” for trauma healing
$1,000 Translation of trauma materials
Go to our "Get Involved" page to make a donation.
Stories of the Earthquake Recovery and Continuing Trauma, April 2010
In one conversation somebody talked about a well-to-do church brother in Tomé whose fancy house was untouched by the earthquake, but because the tremor cracked the hill on which the house is built, the whole neighborhood has been condemned. "I don't know what the Assembly of God church in that neighborhood will do about the new sanctuary they just finished."
In another home of a pastor, they have the calendar that was given out at the annual conference prominently displayed. The calendar has the artist's rendering of the new sanctuary in Curicó that was supposed to be built either this year or next. The artist's rendering is all that's left.
On Friday evening I preached at a mission church, gathered in an ugly makeshift lean-to at the back of a convenience store. Only the bathrooms are left standing of the actual sanctuary.
I asked Elena about insurance. "Most people don't carry insurance on their homes in Chile," she said. "Then, for those who do, the insurance policies are written such that they don't cover damage for earthquakes greater than 8.0 on the Richter scale." The end result is that the family with the fancy house in Tomé is likely also moving into a 9'x25' cabin.
Elena's pastor just came back from taking food to the churches south of Talca. He told us, "The companies there have begun to lay off people. With winter coming on, 1500 people were laid off from just one fish packing plant." In other conversations, others have spoken of layoffs in other industries affected by the quake.
On the highways, one sees trucks carrying prefab cabins, not all of these for homes. The president has promised that all schools will reopen this week (the school year in Chile was supposed to begin in February). These prefab cabins are many of them school rooms or temporary hospitals.
And then there are the emotional and mental effects. "Those days right after the earthquake," one sister of the church said in a conversation (and not aware of me as she said it), "seem like a bad dream." A bad dream everyone has had a tough time waking from.
At the end of this note, I want to thank all of you who have donated to the "Blessing Cabin" project of the Pentecostal Church of Chile. Right now, Elena and her volunteers are running the Post Trauma emotional support program without funding, an doing so successfully. Those cabins, however economical, require money. You have been instrumental in providing at least 20 of the 80 some cabins that have already been built and dedicated. In my next letter, I will have some pictures of those cabins.
Yours in Christ,
David Huegel
Trauma Healing Retreat Conducted in Chile article continued
“I didn’t know they were coming. They just showed up and snatched me out of the home blindfolded, and I was blindfolded for three months as they held me and tortured me. My family didn’t know anything…if I was alive, where I was, nothing.” After seven months he was released, but the wounds of his detention and torture persisted for decades. By the end of the retreat, Herman was a changed man. He was beaming and hugging everyone. “It felt like a burden was released. I have never had a chance to tell what happened and to have it received with such love.”
In the parade of churches at the Annual Meeting, the men are dressed in suits and ties and women are wearing longer skirts and dresses, marching two by two. And Brother Herman proudly paraded wearing the t-shirt he had received at the Camp. The impact of the retreat has been enormous.
Others told stories that were just as dramatic. One young woman, Ellen, talked about her uncle who has never been the same. He was conscripted at 19 years old and forced to fire into the crowd on the day La Moneda (the Chilean White House) was attacked and the government was overthrown. He couldn’t bear to do it, but was told if he didn’t shoot, his family would be punished. He reluctantly closed his eyes and fired aimlessly into the crowd. Today, the weight of the guilt immobilizes him.
A trauma is any experience that overwhelms our ability to cope. A trauma could stem from childhood abuse, detention and torture during a dictatorship, a life-threatening car accident or a hurricane, earthquake or fire.
During the 10 day trauma healing event, 9 people were trained in the skills and theory of trauma healing. They conducted the retreat on the weekend, with the supervision of Brookfield Institute staff.
First Hand Account of the Earthquake continued
On Monday the last delegation from the States was sent off at the airport and the camping season at the Shalom Center was concluded. For a year the Shalom Center board had planned a work camp for their volunteer staff at which they would stage a simulated emergency (sort of a fire drill as I understand it), to make sure that they could evacuate the cabin in less than three minutes. The camp nurse was to direct this simulation. The simulation and retreat would conclude on Saturday evening with a large barbecue and celebration of the completion of the Shalom Center’s tenth year of operation. Due to an emergency in her home church, however, the nurse had to cancel her participation, so based on her preparatory work Elena stayed up most of the night on Thursday night preparing herself to take over the direction of the event.
On Friday during the day the chair of the Shalom Center board in answer to the prayers of many of us over the past few years was able to close the sale of Elena’s home base in the town of Talca, which will become the Administrative Headquarters for the Shalom Center (it’s not possible to have HQ at the camp because of limited communications and extreme weather in the winter). After the earthquake Elena thought, “Horrors, we just bought the building and it probably doesn’t exist anymore.” It turns out to have been like Jeremiah buying a field in the midst of the Babylonian invasion. In this case God chose to protect His own investment (it was now His building, after all) for the service it would provide beginning immediately.
Friday evening, Elena and her staff reviewed all of the emergencies and incidents that they had had during the camping season and took suggestions for improving their procedures. When the earthquake hit at 3:30 AM, Elena was the only one sleeping in a tent. She says she awoke before the earthquake actually began to be felt—she says a noise precedes the quakes usually. She was sleeping on an air matress and was fully clothed (as camp director she sleeps that way with her glasses within easy reach because she has to be ready to respond when needed). She was out of the tent quickly and ready to raise the alarm. But all of the volunteers were already evacuating the cabin in perfect order. They counted noses and all were present. It was a scary moment because they could hear the boulders crashing down from the enormous sheer rock cliff on the other side of the river/ravine. No one, and not even the cabin (which is wooden and therefore somewhat flexible) was hurt. They sang a couple of songs, prayed, and, once the first aftershocks were over, set out on foot to check on the two neighbors that they have (one of which has a cabin perched on the edge of the ravine). Everyone was OK, but also very glad to see the Shalom Center staff.
They turned on their two-way radio and were surprised to hear . . . nothing. No police, no national park, no radio chatter at all. The next morning they walked to the nearest village and found that the dirt road to there was still passable. They knew that the families of the volunteers would all be worried, and they had already had their drill. So the immediate order of business was to get everyone back to HQ, contact their families, and then onto buses to their hometowns. There were several mercies in this. They waited for the second bus of the morning from the village to Talca (where HQ is), in order to be sure that the buses were indeed getting through. Elena and her assistant Jorge stayed behind to close up the camp and pack up all the food in ice for distribution back in town. Elena was able to get down off the mountain by 3 PM, and only as they left the mountain and turned on the truck’s AM radio did they begin to get an idea of the size of the disaster. As they drove along, most of the buildings and homes made of adobe had been flattened. Downtown Talca (about a six block radius) was in ruins. Arriving back at HQ, however, they found several other mercies. Miraculously, the land telephone line was working and somehow they had been able to contact almost all of the families. By the end of the day, almost everyone was on a bus for home.
Three of the volunteers who had not been able to come to the work camp remained incommunicated for several days. The very last one to report in did so this evening while I was on the phone with Elena—it was the camp nurse whose home church is close to the center of the disaster area. She is OK, but very busy.
Elena is a missionary of the Global Ministries of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and the United Church of Christ. In Chile, however, she serves under the covering and as a member of the Pentecostal Church of Chile. This denomination, headed by Bishop Ulises Munoz and his cabinet, has a great number of churches, many if not most of which are located throughout the most severely affected areas. The denomination has its mother church in the town of Curicó (where all the Chilean grapes you buy come from). This town’s center was also demolished by the quake. But since it is a little farther away from the epicenter, the army has not had enough troops to enforce a curfew there (Talca does have a curfew). Elena says that yesterday Curicó saw looting and violence, and one person was killed. By Saturday night she had driven to Curicó and the next morning was available to drive the Bishop around as he assessed the damage and began to visit his flock. She asks us to pray for Bishop Ulises, because this has been extremely stressful for him, and he feels he must be strong for everyone else. There are at least two church buildings that collapses completely, though the mother church and the bishop’s house were miraculously spared.
It became apparent early on that there was going to be a pressing need for water and for temporary shelter. But where could these be got? Elena could only think of the artesian well up at the camp and the tents that the Shalom Center owns. At two AM on Monday morning she and Jorge were back up at the camp pulling down the tents, filling up every available jug of water, and siphoning off what diesel remained in the camp generator for the Camp’s truck that Elena was using. She told me “I knew that we would never get the tents back once we loan them out, and there was no one to consult about using them. But given the circumstances I felt justified in making an executive decision.”
The next day she spoke with Richard (the bishop’s son) and said, “the need is so huge that we can’t address it all. Pick the place that was hit the hardest, and let’s go spend our time there.” They picked the mission church at Tutuquén Bajo where Richard supervises the work. Here one of the families was crushed by their own house, and only one daughter survives in serious condition. Five more families lost their homes. Elena made another executive decision and took along the health kits that the women of the churches had put together to send to Burma. When they arrived at the place, Richard began distributing water and Elena gathered all the children. She says that the symptoms of trauma were obvious. She spent three hours with them, using paper and crayons to help them express themselves, playing games that taught them how to brush their teeth and clean themselves with just half a cup of water, speaking about the importance of cleanliness at this time, etc.
This morning (Tuesday) Elena met with the Bishop and such of his cabinet as they were able to gather. They had to make decisions regarding addressing the needs of the people in the churches. There are two pressing needs that will not immediately be addressed by the government or Non Government agencies: 1. The need for Post Trauma care 2. The need for adequate housing. They have a month before the autumn (their autumn is our spring, remember) rains and the cold set in. Elena, newly certified in Trauma Awareness and Resilience, is supposed to come up with a plan by March 9 that will mobilize all of the Christian Educators (Sunday School teachers, and such) of the churches to offer the post trauma care. Pray for her in this regard as she prepares materials and decides how best to train those who haven’t been trained. There is an architect who is a member of the Curicó church who has been commissioned to develop very specific plans and cost estimates for a one-room efficiency house that can be prefabricated. The plan is to turn the open-air but roofed gym of the Curicó church into a factory staffed by volunteers from the men of the church. They will begin constructing the frames of these houses. The affected families will be given instructions on preparing the foundations and piers (due to flooding, the houses have to be up off the ground) for the houses to be set up on once they are ready. The church cabinet estimates that from among the church people there is an immediate need for 200 of these houses in the Seventh region alone. No estimates are yet available for the sixth and eighth regions (these numbered regions are like states in the US).
There are a number of dangers present, and although Elena is well, I would ask that you pray for her safety: 1. as she drives roads that have been damaged 2. as she welcomes refugees into her home (one of the pastors who lost his home is bringing his family) 3. as she is potentially exposed to illness 4. as she is tempted to stretch herself too thin and not rest adequately.
News from Chile in March from David Huegel, continued
The government has begun to provide prefab cabins, something like the FEMA mobile homes after Katrina, only much smaller. Elena is concerned about these cabins, because they are being installed with no foundations or pilings. The rainy season is now less than a month away, and the problem is that after the earthquake no one can be quite sure where the water will run. Elena has seen one place where there were waterfalls and now there is nothing—the water evidently running underground. What will happen when the rain comes—especially when you consider that along with the rain comes cold weather.
The first person Elena and I want to ask you to pray for is Richard Muñoz, the eldest son of Bishop Ulíses Muñoz. At one time Richard was a taxi driver and has served for a long time as his father’s ad hoc gopher and deputy. Richard is using the Shalom Center pickup truck to visit all of the villages and towns around Curicó to take water and food and to survey the damage and all the need. He is finding, not surprisingly, that the aid pouring in is concentrating in the urban areas and that the rural areas are receiving little help. In good part from his reports and that of other pastors, the church leadership has determined that there is an immediate need for 200-300 cabins—this is not the number of church people who lost their homes, this is the number of church families who lost their homes AND have no other family or friends that can take them in.
These reports have also brought the estimate that 15 churches are either one the ground or will have to be torn down and rebuilt. In their initial meetings after the quake, and because it is a traumatic thing to lose the place of worship, the bishop and the leadership were inclined to think that the church’s piority should be to rebuild. For years, the leadership has dreamed of replacing the Pentecostal Church’s “cathedral” (a big, boxlike warehouse of a building in Curicó) with a larger and more distinguished building. Much money has been collected for that purpose. In this crisis, there was no doubt that those funds would have to be diverted for attention to the crisis. That was a wrenching decision, but the second decision was even more wrenching—that the money would have to be used to build cabins for the people with most need rather than rebuilding the houses of worship. Please pray for the leadership of the Pentecostal Church because this decision is not taken without regret and without the potential of a great deal of criticism from those whose homes were not destroyed. Elena told me “It is the right decision, though. Once the people have a safe place to live, they themselves will set about rebuilding the place of worship as a grateful response to God.” In the administrative process I would ask that you pray for Mauricio, the personal assistant of the Bishop who is taking leadership in designing and presenting the church’s disaster response plan: a plan entitled “Levanta la Esperanza” (Lift up hope). Tomorrow all of the District Superintendents of the Church (including Pastor Aguayo from Constitución, whose own house and church were demolished) will be meeting. Mauricio and Elena will be presenting the plan. Pray that the Superintendents might be united at this time and that the church may respond quickly and effectively to the need.
This brings me to the third person Elena and I would like to ask prayer for. Mr. Iturriaga was a neighbor of Elena’s when she lived in Curicó. He has a modest construction company and has placed himself, his employees, his trucks, and his knowledge at the service of the church at this time. With the architect they have developed the plans for a small cabin which will cost $1100 USD each to build. The covered open air gym of the Curicó Church is being transformed into a factory for these cabins where all of the building materials will be brought and cut. The walls will have aluminum window frames for better insulation and weatherproofing, the roofs will be insulated, the doors will have locks, and the building materials will be good quality—all improvements over what the government would provide. The families in the communities will receive instructions regarding the foundations and the pilings, and Mr. Iturriaga will oversee the delivery and assembly on site of the cabins.
The second priority that the church leadership has decided to focus on is trauma response and emotional first aid. As I told you before, Elena and 8 other people from the church received a Seminar for Trauma Awareness and Resilience certification. Three of these people are from the Curicó church. They and Elena have already gone out into the communities to do an initial assessment of need. They have also had the first workshop for Sunday school personnel—in this case for the young women who are Sunday school overseers, each one with 20 congregations under her care and supervision. These workshops, community visits, and reassessment of their effectiveness will continue.
Finally, I would lift up the care and emotional support of Bishop Ulíses Muñoz and the leadership of the Pentecostal Church of Chile. Elena’s supervisor from the Board of Global Ministries, Rev. Felix Ortiz, Executive Secretary for Latin America and the Carribean (who himself was a long-time missionary in Haiti and who has been assisting response to that disaster), will be arriving in Chile for a visit next Monday. At this point, someone from outside who can come to offer pastoral accompaniment and a sympathetic ear, will be a real blessing.
Elena told me that a one hour trip from Curicó to Talca has taken her five hours on the bus. They have to consider carefully each trip that the pickup truck takes, on account of fuel shortages. There is a real doubt with regard to whether, even with money in hand (and a contract already made with the supplier) they will be able to procure the materials for the first dozen houses. Some of the team members are showing signs of fatigue and stress.
May God bless each one of you who have, by your own prayers and sharing, been made part of the Pentecostal Church of Chile’s project to Lift up Hope in a country that is not accustomed to thinking itself as being in need.
On behalf of Elena,
David Huegel
