| |
The November Storm
Written by Noah Bullock
|
In the early pre-dawn hours, a low-pressure system stalled over El Salvador’s volcanic peaks and in a matter of hours dumped amounts of rain that rivals Hurricane Mitch. It was as if the damage begged us to take the storm seriously after being out shined by hurricane Ida on the 24-hour news cycle. The torrents of water overwhelmed the country already saturated from three days of rain and took its heaviest toll on those who live on nature’s margins. Populations living in ravines, on the river’s edge, or precariously, below the mountain’s slope.
The morning after the storm, Puerto La Libertad looked like a battle scene. In the predawn hours, boulders the size of moto-taxis rolled onto the streets. The flood waters surging down from San Salvador unearthed a massive Cieba tree that fell and crushed the bridge on the east end of town with the force of an earthquake. The Cieba tree whose massive gray spinning trunks can pass for a prehistoric creature laid with its leafy appendages buried in mud and its clean exposed roots pointed to the sky. Even the new upscale shopping center did not escape the floodwater’s sabotage. Mud filled the parking lot and water overwhelmed the underground canal, blowing open a crater in front of Pollo Campero, and exposing huge steel beams, and crushed asphalt.
The next day the water had receded and life began anew. From a bridge on the west end of town, the newly carved riverbank was lined with women washing cloths in the sediment thick water. On their upriver side lay a pile of cloth ragged and stained from the mud. The women picked through the pile, selecting the salvageable items to wash, and discarding lost cloths into the rapids.
|
| |
The bridge itself seemed to tower over small canyons carved out by thsurging floodwater between the center columns. The bridge’s foundations hung precariously anchored to a few large boulders and cast a shadow in the afternoon light on the exposed stone riverbed beneath. Men pulled wood from the mass of debris that piled three stories high against the bridge’s center column forming a dam midstream. The men split the wood and stacked it in square columns to dry.
In the last house on the street before the bridge, three brothers crouched in the tiny space left between the new mud floor and their home’s tin roof, twisted in the direction of the current that past over top. Slowly they passed buckets full of thick mud to two smaller boys who dumped them outside their house. Up the street, kids walked on a path beaten down between similar piles of accumulating mud. The single story skyline of tin and cinder block houses stood like a broken smile. Clean gaps where homes vanished against whole houses full of mud against the rough edges of others simply crushed and cracked by the torrent’s blow. |
|
 |
A man washed mud and debris form his hot dog stand. Chained to a tree to discourage thieves, the shiny tin cart had floated in the high water like a channel marker. Another older man sat outside his crumpled home dismantling his old television to lay it out to dry. “Can’t miss the telenovelas,” I joked as I passed by, “We are going to do everything possible, its just about time” he smiled and assured me. |
|
La Libertad, El Salvador |
| |
Mattresses lay drying against the stonewall that separated the neighborhood from the river. The wall guides the river’s bend around the community for 200 yards. The wall took six months to build, and every family contributed. “You have no idea how much we suffered to build this thing,” said a man who could not hide his sadness. I could only think to say that it was worth it. The stone and cement kept the river at bay long enough that the community lost only what they had and nobody they knew. As we stood at the community’s edge, observing where the water surged into the neighborhood, children squealed and giggled, begging us to take pictures of them doing front flips off the fractured edges of the martyred wall.
When provoked, Salvadorans often say “estamos jodidos,” we are screwed. But it is never really said like a complaint, rather, a joke about the truth. The firewood collecting, the swimming in toxic runoff, the washing of muddy rags, and the ridiculous fixing of televisions all seemed to be a joke about the truth. On that day, in that community, the truth was bittersweet; having lost most of what little they had, they were all alive and together to pick through and find what remained. Other less fortunate communities simply disappeared the night before.
In the following days the country would take count of the damage. The newspaper reported that the Salvadoran Navy was finding bodies off the coast of La Libertad. People swept out to sea in the brown torrent. The death toll has stalled at 198 while, families, wait for the mud to release their disappeared. In San Vicente, where mudslides wiped out the entire town of Verapaz, no one seems to know how many are missing. Nationally, 38 bridges collapsed, there was 800 million dollars in damage to the roads, and an unknown number of homes destroyed. In the post storm calculation of damage, a cynical side column appeared in the daily paper “El Mundo” noting that for fourteen hours there were no homicides in El Salvador. |
|
|
|
| click here to view the slideshow |
| Back to Article Page |
|
|
|
