Alas, a theologian and peace activist, was speaking of the night of Jan. 13, when a deadly earthquake hit his native El Salvador. As Alas told a crowd of about 20 students and Jewish leaders at NYU s Bronfman Center for Jewish Student Life last night, every one of us was panicking. Alas, who was only 10 miles away from the epicenter of the quake when it struck, choked back tears as he described the conditions in the small villages ravaged by the quake. Children came running up to me, and the first thing they asked for was water. Their wells were ruined, Alas said.
People couldn t even cry.
It was too much. He emphasized the need for blankets and said that municipalities lacked the resources to provide fresh water to towns where wells were destroyed. It s very cold in El Salvador today, he said. The other disasters El Salvador has faced over the past 20 years, including Hurricane Mitch in 1998 and a 12-year civil war, pale in comparison to the quake, Alas said. If we combine the destruction of Hurricane Mitch, the earthquake in 1986 and the civil war, the destruction of this earthquake would be higher, he said.