I am struggling with how to start this post and have deleted and restarted many times. I am not sure I am able to ever capture in words what we saw, went through and just how lucky we were.
Saturday morning we arrived in Canoa to a beautiful day and had a wonderful afternoon playing in the waves with Lola. At this moment it would be impossible to conceive just how differently the day would end. We were in our room, Luis taking a nap and me just relaxing when the the whole place started shaking. Actually shaking does not do it justice, it felt like the world might end at any second and actually it sadly did for many. But we made it unscathed, we were the lucky ones.
The rest of the night went by like I was watching a movie or in some terrible nightmare. Luis was amazing and went straight to a little girl stuck under her roof. The rest of the town was heading to the hills as a tsunami warning went out. But he would not leave her, and eventually him and the other men got her out. We put her and her mum in my car determined to get her to a clinic. What we did not know at the time the place we were headed was even worse off then Canoa. She was the bravest little girl I have met, Dominica, a name that I will never forget. She asked me to take her sock off and her toes were hanging off, and she still held it together. We took her as far as we could, as the bridge was out. A big truck was going to try and get through off road and they took her. I will find out what happened but I hope they made it there, as her legs required desperate attention.
We then returned to a Canoa on fire, we went towards the fire thinking it was our hostel street (everything looked very different at this time), and it was horrifying. I will never get those images from my mind, it was like watching something out of an end of the world film. We quickly got out of there, dodging polls and electrical wires and found a crew that were setting up head quarters for finding and helping people. None of these people were rescue workers, all people from the town or visiting the town coming together to help. There were not many people left as many had headed to the hills. Luis and I were put on duty to find buried people. We went to help a man buried under three floors with a dead wife/partner/friend beside him. I tried to get him out with my car, break parts of the hotel to try and free him. But we could not, the hotel looked like it would fall the rest of the way at any second and tremors kept coming. Eventually more came and he got out, whether he would have pulled through at this point, we do not know. But I will find out.
The next morning, we could see how much of Canoa was lost, how much people lost their homes, lively hoods and sadly much more.
We are now trying to make it back to Quito, we have three great Danish young people with us. We have driven through towns full of sadness and wreckage. Roads that are no longer roads. But we are the lucky ones, and I am still trying to process how I feel about this. It some how seems unfair, of course I am thankful but I cannot help but feel this great sense of guilt.
Thank you for all the well wishes and the messages of love and support and I hope now some people can find it in their hearts to give to the people of the Coast of Ecuador.
Saturday morning we arrived in Canoa to a beautiful day and had a wonderful afternoon playing in the waves with Lola. At this moment it would be impossible to conceive just how differently the day would end. We were in our room, Luis taking a nap and me just relaxing when the the whole place started shaking. Actually shaking does not do it justice, it felt like the world might end at any second and actually it sadly did for many. But we made it unscathed, we were the lucky ones.
The rest of the night went by like I was watching a movie or in some terrible nightmare. Luis was amazing and went straight to a little girl stuck under her roof. The rest of the town was heading to the hills as a tsunami warning went out. But he would not leave her, and eventually him and the other men got her out. We put her and her mum in my car determined to get her to a clinic. What we did not know at the time the place we were headed was even worse off then Canoa. She was the bravest little girl I have met, Dominica, a name that I will never forget. She asked me to take her sock off and her toes were hanging off, and she still held it together. We took her as far as we could, as the bridge was out. A big truck was going to try and get through off road and they took her. I will find out what happened but I hope they made it there, as her legs required desperate attention.
We then returned to a Canoa on fire, we went towards the fire thinking it was our hostel street (everything looked very different at this time), and it was horrifying. I will never get those images from my mind, it was like watching something out of an end of the world film. We quickly got out of there, dodging polls and electrical wires and found a crew that were setting up head quarters for finding and helping people. None of these people were rescue workers, all people from the town or visiting the town coming together to help. There were not many people left as many had headed to the hills. Luis and I were put on duty to find buried people. We went to help a man buried under three floors with a dead wife/partner/friend beside him. I tried to get him out with my car, break parts of the hotel to try and free him. But we could not, the hotel looked like it would fall the rest of the way at any second and tremors kept coming. Eventually more came and he got out, whether he would have pulled through at this point, we do not know. But I will find out.
The next morning, we could see how much of Canoa was lost, how much people lost their homes, lively hoods and sadly much more.
We are now trying to make it back to Quito, we have three great Danish young people with us. We have driven through towns full of sadness and wreckage. Roads that are no longer roads. But we are the lucky ones, and I am still trying to process how I feel about this. It some how seems unfair, of course I am thankful but I cannot help but feel this great sense of guilt.
Thank you for all the well wishes and the messages of love and support and I hope now some people can find it in their hearts to give to the people of the Coast of Ecuador.
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