Tower Topics ~ Summer 2001

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LCC student visits earthquake-ravaged home town

Pablo Hernandez would have to wait until morning to view the destruction.

Pablo Hernandez struggled to keep his mind
on studies while his family in El Salvador
recovered from earthquake damage.

After arriving in the night on Easter Sunday, the trip from the airport to his family’s house took him through streets darkened by disaster.

Monday would offer his first glimpse of the aftermath of two massive earthquakes that in February slammed his home town of San Vincente, El Salvador.



Sunrise brought the racket of construction. Throughout the city, as they’d done every day for the past three months, men, women and children would work until nightfall rebuilding their lives. Meanwhile, Hernandez, a member of Conception Seminary College’s Language, Culture and Church program, walked through dusty streets, listening to stories of a community both cursed and blessed.

His uncle, a sacristan at a local parish, told of how the church’s ceiling collapsed on hundreds of panicked school children. Amazingly, no one was killed, but it could have been much worse. The nearby school building, where the children had been an hour before, was completely demolished.

Friends told of how 20 farm workers were killed in a mudslide while planting coffee on the side of a nearby volcano.

Former classmates at El Seminario menor de Pio XII (Minor Seminary of St. Pius XII) recounted how the earth seemed to jump beneath their feet, throwing them to the ground time and again.

Not a house was left standing. Broken furniture was strewn about and hastily constructed shelters replaced destroyed homes.

“Everything looked different,” the serious and soft-spoken seminarian said. “All was torn down. Children were in the streets. People were looking for food and clean water.”

The earthquakes, which were followed by more than 3,000 minor tremors, claimed about 1,500 lives throughout El Salvador, destroyed more than 200,000 homes and caused millions of dollars in damage. For Hernandez, the 15 days following the initial news reports were filled with fear as he awaited word on his family.

He eventually learned through Red Cross sources that his relatives were shaken but safe. In Conception, 3,000 miles away, Hernandez went quietly about his days. When not studying, he religiously showed up for his work-study job in the Abbey Center for Prayer and Ministry, saving his paychecks, $500 in all, to take home with him. Conception Seminary College sent an additional $500 and a relief fund was established in his sponsoring diocese, Louisville, Ky.

On Hernandez’s Easter visit, he found most everyone still living in temporary housing, food and water still scarce. Family and friends greeted him with joy tempered by worry.

A little girl stands by the rubble of her home that was
destroyed during two earthquakes that struck El Salvador.

With the rainy season on the horizon, the danger of more mudslides like the one that killed the farm workers, and a desperate lack of shelter weighs heavy on the community.

But Hernandez speaks of their struggles with a matter-of-fact confidence.

“The people are still the same,” he says. “They have faith, faith in God and faith in each other. They ask for protection from their patrons, Our Lady and St. Vincent. Their relationships with one another are stronger and they help each other more than ever.”

Such strength of character, he says, is born of hardship.

“Earthquakes are an old story. They’ve happened before, about every 10 or 15 years,” he says with a laugh. “We know they’re going to happen. We just never know when.”

In recent months, Hernandez has been asked frequently why his family doesn’t leave such a dangerous region.

He answers with one word: “Family.”

“My family has had the opportunity to go to a place where there was little damage,” he notes. “But they won’t abandon our relatives – aunts, uncles and cousins. They don’t want to leave family and home. And if I were there, I would be right there with them.”

In a nation accustomed to hard times, the Hernandez family has known more than its fair share.

Pablo’s father was killed in the revolution of the 1980s. His sister died seven years ago from a brain tumor and three years later his mother died of tuberculosis.

“I am used to bad experiences,” he says with a sad grin.

Hernandez reluctantly admits that it is hard to be so far away at such a difficult time.

“I wish I could be there with them,” he says. “But the important thing is for us to be united in spirit and to suffer together.

“I am united with them in my prayers.”

Anyone interested in assisting El Salvador earthquake relief can send donations to Father Ronald Knott, vocation director for the Diocese of Louisville, at the Maloney Center, 1200 S. Shelby St., Louisville, KY 40203.

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