EscapeArtist – Providing Relief in Fire-Ravaged Valparaíso de Chile

Like many coastal cities, Valparaíso seems to rise from the ocean in a sort of meandering stair-step trellis fashion. While this accomplishes many purposes, not the least of which is fully utilizing precious real estate and providing wonderful ocean views, it also provides a means for a fire to quickly leap from building to building.

In early April, my friend John Cobin showed me around this historic city. It’s natural harbor made it appealing for obvious reasons, at one time gaining it the title, “Jewel of the Pacific.” It also boasts Latin America’s first stock exchange. In fact, it was, at one time, considered to be the most important port in all of South America.

As you can see from this picture, the buildings are practically stacked upon each other. John mentioned that a fire in the city would be devastating, due to old construction (that nevertheless has withstood hundreds of earthquakes), ocean breezes and the lay of the terrain. It’s happened before, but this time his words seem eerily prophetic.

Over the years, new arrivals started settling into Viña del Mar, just to the north, as Valparaíso aged and became outdated. Larger buildings, condos and modern conveniences drew money to Viña, leaving the less prosperous and poor in Valparaíso.

As John wrote an article about beautiful Reñaca Beach for his EscapeAmericaNow.Info blog the following week, he took this picture. Little did he know that this was just the beginning of what will likely go down as the worst fire in Valparaíso history.

By the time the fire was under control, about 3,000 homes had been destroyed, along with most personal possessions. For many of these families, everything they owned has been lost – leaving estimates of the homeless above 12,000. Fifteen died, most of them firefighters (firemen are volunteers in Chile).

As I watched this tragedy unfold from Santiago, and the enormity of the situation became more evident, I began contacting folks I have networked with in an effort to help with relief. For all our faults, this is something that we from the USA tend to be good at. Networking is something I thoroughly enjoy and one of the reasons I’m in Chile in the first place. So it only seemed natural to put that network into action to try to help the homeless.

Attempting to get a firsthand view of the damage proved to be difficult. Congestion in the city was heavy, and many roads were blocked. Only those who had received the tetanus vaccination were being allowed in, and they ran out of vaccine. But we were able to see some of the damage even from the main street going through downtown Valparaíso.

It was encouraging to see the supplies of food and clothing that arrived in Valparaíso very quickly; so much so that they actually asked people to stop sending them. Other relief efforts have focused on finding immediate shelter and, of course, the amazing challenge of cleaning up and salvaging what few things of value were left.

You may recall that there is no central organization in Chile that brings relief. This was the act of individuals and businesses meeting the immediate needs of their fellow Chileans. It’s an excellent example of why the state isn’t needed in such situations.

Because of the flood of  resources coming into the area initially, we started to realize that one of the best ways we could get involved would be with a view of longer term support. It would be difficult for these families to get rental apartments under these circumstances. As you can imagine, the laws of supply and demand drive prices on rentals up, possibly putting them out of reach of so many poor people. With this in mind, we began to seek out possible housing for families while striving to identify the families that need help.

Our goal was to check out the housing, meet the people, and then, if it looks like a good fit, help them establish a lease and pay for the first six months. It was anticipated that this would provide a boost and time to get their lives in order before they need to start paying rent again.

Here’s a view from behind the city, looking out toward Viña del Mar. The area in the foreground is mostly burned out, with Valpo just over the rise. The view beyond the rise is quite beautiful, were it not for the knowledge of the cost of the ashes before us.

This house sits atop a hill that’s now surrounded by ashes. It’s a strange view, where the flames obviously roared around the house, and yet spared it. Talking to a man and his wife along the road here, we found out they have a home nearby. The man was quite animated, describing how the fire raged and leaped from one place to another. Yet their home was spared as well.

Another prong of our effort was to help repair housing or make it more livable for folks who either had damage to their homes or had to flee to places less livable. We’ll be making efforts to identify such families as well.

One of the challenges is to know who to help. And, unfortunately, part of this challenge is to know how to avoid the scam artists that inevitably take advantage of such situations.

We quickly identified three situations that needed help through a local charitable organization. However, as details unfolded, we began to realize that something was amiss. We were not able to meet the people. In fact, we were also told that we couldn’t see the buildings we were supposed to be renting for them, for privacy reasons.

It’s easy to see how one could get sucked into something like this. The heart that wants to be a part of helping our fellow man is often likely to think others have the same compassion, especially when so much evidence of it surrounds them. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case, as we discovered.

Feeling the burden to be responsible with the donations of others, we were unwilling to provide funds for situations we could not verify. Therefore, our initial efforts were stalled.

Having lost the momentum and realizing we would have to restructure our efforts, we decided to direct the donations of good people to organizations already set up to offer aid. One that has a good track record in the area, and is very familiar to most of us, is Salvation Army. They stepped up to the plate for the Iquique earthquake in early April, then were on the spot in Valparaíso when needed, and apparently have an office in the city already.

If you would like to help families affected by both the earthquake and fire, you can find more details regarding how to donate by contacting The Salvation Army – South America West.

This trip to help get Chile on the EscapeArtist map has been a wonderful blessing for me. It’s exciting to be a part of lives striving to escape to new places and learn about new opportunities. Tragedies like this are another aspect of that, providing a means for us EscapeArtists to give to the world in ways we never could have otherwise. I’m blessed to be a part of this as well.

Gratefully,
Joe Johnson

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