Image courtesy of Fiorella Ordonez.
On Saturday, April 16, tragedy struck Ecuador. An earthquake with a 7.8 magnitude hit the coast. 658 people are dead. 12,492 are injured and 58 people are still missing. Thousands of houses were destroyed, leading over 26, 091 people to take home in shelters. The numbers are still increasing. The number of people impacted by this disaster is unimaginable. According to defense minister Ricardo Patino, “It’s going to take us years to recover from this.” This is the biggest earthquake to hit Ecuador since the 1987 earthquake, which killed 1,000 people. While most of us were worried about midterms, students from Ecuador feared for their families. Luis Saenz, Carlos Correa, Daniela Flores, Maria Jose Reyes, Clemente Duran-Ballen, Belen Saenz de Viteri, Dayanara Agila and Fiorella Ordonez were determined to help and asked their fellow SCAD students for donations. They even got together with Gabriela Rosero and Xavier Garciato to get donations from Kennesaw University. I was able to sit down with Fiorella to ask her a few questions about this selfless effort.
Jordan Di Pirro: How did you hear about the earthquake in Ecuador?
Fiorella Ordonez: That Saturday I was on my way to a friend’s house, when I received a text message from my mother saying, “Fio, there’s just been a quake. It was pretty strong, but I just want to let you know that I am fine. Have you heard anything from your father?” My first reaction was to call her, but she insisted to me that I call my father because she said it was pretty strong. So I immediately hung up and called my dad. Luckily, he answered pretty fast and before I started talking he just said, “Fio, we are all ok, your grandmother is fine.” It was weird because I knew my parents were fine, but at the same time they both sounded pretty scared. I asked my father where he was and how strong the shake was and he told me he was at the beach with my grandmother and that the shake was so strong it felt like the ground was moving from side to side like a hammock.
Image courtesy of Fiorella Ordonez.
JD: How has the earthquake affected you personally?
FO: After I knew my parent were fine we started to get in contact with the rest of the family. We heard that the epicenter was in a state named Manabi, and from there everything went down because my mother’s side of the family comes from that state. We had several members of the family missing, luckily most of them were found safe. However, my grandfather lost two of his brothers to the earthquake. We are a really close family, so of course his loss touched me.
JD: Has it impacted anyone you know?
FO: The earthquake has impacted everyone. We are a pretty small country and to date I don’t know anyone who could say he or she has not been impacted by a catastrophe of such magnitude. Not only the loss of family members, but buildings collapsed, homes were destroyed and the list goes on. Until today, there are more than 600 deaths registered as a consequence of the earthquake and more that 700 after shakes.
Image courtesy of Fiorella Ordonez.
JD: How did you and other SCAD students come up with the idea to collect donations?
FO: After the earthquake happened, all my Ecuadorian friends and I created a message group to check that all of our family members back home were OK. We were feeling very impotent because we were so far and we couldn’t join the rescue teams or the collecting efforts back home. We all received an email from Peter May, coordinator for International Student Services, checking on us and asking if there was anything he could do to help us. I think that pretty much triggered the idea to ask him if we could collect goods in the school and send them to Ecuador.
The next thing we did was get in contact with the embassy and figure out how to send the supplies home and what were the things they needed the most. And after getting all the logistics down and the information (this was a matter of hours because we knew we needed to act fast) we decided to start the campaign to inform people about what had happened and ask them for goods they could donate. Then our Ecuadorian friends at Kennesaw State University, Gabriela Rosero and Xavier Garcia, also decided to join to our efforts by collecting goods at their college as well.
Image courtesy of Maria Jose Reyes.
JD: How much have you collected so far?
FO: Thanks to the good response we received from the students, faculty and administrations of SCAD Atlanta and KU, we collected more than 1,000 goods in a matter of four days. We sent this to the General Consulate of Ecuador this past Monday; we had to rent a truck because they couldn’t fit in our cars. Afterwards we received calls from people who wanted to make donations so we kept collecting them until today (Thursday, April 28) and will bring them to the consulate tomorrow, the last day they will be receiving donations of goods.
Image courtesy of Fiorella Ordonez.
JD: What are some ways people can help?
FO: One cause that we have all supported through the beginning has been the Saving Ecuador Foundation. One can donate thorough their website and the good thing about this organization, aside from its transparency and good reputation, is that they lay out every activity that they carry out daily. They work alongside the International Medical Corps to create a plan with not only immediate action, but thinking in the long term about how to help rebuild our country after the earthquake.