Crisis-trained chaplains with the Billy Graham Rapid Response Team are deploying to Ecuador to assist Samaritan’s Purse in the aftermath of a deadly 7.8-magnitude earthquake that shook the South American country recently.
Experienced chaplains Carolin and Desi Perez will provide emotional and spiritual care to patients, families and medical staff in the field hospital set up by Samaritan’s Purse shortly after the natural disaster. The hospital, per the Samaritan’s Purse website, is fully functioning and notably includes an emergency room with the ability to see 100 patients a day, an area for daily operating procedures and in-patient beds.
Carolin and Desi, who speak Spanish, will make rounds in the field hospital, which is located in Chone, a coastal city south of the quake’s epicenter. The medical crew continues to treat those injured by the natural disaster, which is considered by many to be the the worst in Ecuador since 1987.
“There’s been over 400 fatalities and over 4,000 injured and certainly thousands and thousands have been displaced, their homes damaged,” said Jack Munday, international director of the Rapid Response Team. “And as we experienced in Haiti, there’s a fear of aftershocks, so even if there’s a structure that’s standing, many times people do not feel safe staying there.”
The Rapid Response Team deployed to Haiti in 2010 following an earthquake that killed more than 300,000 people. In Haiti, Munday said, amputations were common and likely among the physical injuries the Perezes will encounter in Ecuador.
But much like the aftershocks that follow an earthquake, trauma itself can have a ripple effect, Munday said.
“In a response like this, the trauma has a ripple effect, and trauma also has its aftershocks in the life of a person and that’s on top of the obvious devastation,” Munday said. “It could be a physical injury, loss of a loved one, or loss of a home, and so the whole traumatic element is lasting longer than maybe in some types of disasters.”
This deployment is the RRT’s first to Ecuador and it marks the 19th country where crisis-trained chaplains have responded either with a training or a deployment. Carolin and Desi have served on some of those international deployments before, including more recently in Japan, where an earthquake triggered a tsunami, and the Philippines in the aftermath of a cyclone.
“Carolin and Desi are seasoned, experienced chaplains on international deployments,” Munday said. “They are very keen in understanding culture and in this case language as well.
“There’s that element of sharing hope with people and praying with people,” Munday added. “They will do a wonderful job in doing that.”
