As the country of Chile recovers from one of the worst earthquakes on record, residents in areas spared by the devastation are pulling together to aid in relief efforts.
In Santiago, a team of Jewish volunteers under the direction of Rabbi Ishai Libersohn, youth director of Chabad-Lubavitch of Chile, set out from the capital city late last week to deliver badly needed food shipments to police, fire crews and soldiers patrolling the roads into Concepcion, where most of the damage was concentrated.
According to news reports eight days after the magnitude-8.8 earthquake left an estimated two million people homeless in the center part of Chile, officials settled on a death toll almost half of the original estimate of more than 800 lives lost.
In the capital, some 200 kilometers from the quake’s epicenter, residents awoke just after 3:30 a.m. Feb. 28 to intense shaking, but damage was minimal.
Chabad-Lubavitch of Chile co-director Chaya Perman reported a day after the earthquake that the downtown Jewish center withstood some cosmetic damage, but that all of the community’s institutions there escaped relatively unscathed.
Later reports, however, indicated that one synagogue in Concepcion was destroyed.
The Associated Press reported on Sunday that Chilean Housing Minister Patricia Poblete estimated that at least 500,000 homes were destroyed nationwide. The figure, however, could reach 1.5 million once surveys are complete.
Perman, who was able to celebrate the Jewish holiday of Purim last week with their congregation, said soon after the disaster that “our hearts and prayers are with the victims of this horrible tragedy.”
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