Honduras Earthquake Updates from Jesuits in the region

Find below two, short narratives from Jesuits (MIS Province) living in the region about the 7.1 earthquake the struck the Atlantic coast of Honduras on Thursday, May 28, 2009.

Dick Perl
have been through about 8 of these quakes in three different countries (Belize, Guatemala and Honduras), but today's shake at 2:25 am wins the prize.

I was awakened with the whole house shaking. My room is on the second floor, and at one point I thought, "The whole house is going down." The 7 foot high bookcase in my room (and another one like it in my office on the first floor) fell over. It fell across my door -- if I had had to get out quickly, it would have taken me a couple minutes to move the book case and books piled up in front of the door. Lamps on desks through the house also fell over. I couldn't believe the noise of the house shaking.

It lasted about a minute.

The 7.1 quake (which is pretty strong), had its center in the Caribbean about 85 miles from Punta Gorda. It was felt as far north as Mexico, and as far south as Nicaragua, and even some islands in the Caribbean. Relatively little damage in Belize, fortunately.

Jack Warner
Greetings from a shaken and very shaky Progreso. Just to let everyone know, since we seem to be in international news: We had a serious earthquake last night about 2:30 a.m. It was a 7.1 intensity; the epicenter was at sea some 10 kms. to the north of Roatan.

Given the intensity, we got off light; the thing that saved us seems to be the fact that the center was very deep, and the quake itself did not last too long. No one is hurt either of the Jesuit community nor of the Teatro family.

The BIG damage here in Progreso is the bridge over the Rio Ulúa: there are (were) two parallel bridges which handled the two different directions. The older one (from the 60's) is completely fallen; the newer one (built by the Japanese government some 5 years ago) is closed for the moment due to serious damage which hasn’t been evaluated yet. That is a major problem which it is going to cost a good deal of time to fix.

The anti-earthquake design of the San José house served us well; a lot of shelving that fell over and left a mess of litter, and that sort of thing, but no serious damage to the building.
The teatro building suffered a lot of small damage, and is going to take a considerable amount of repair. It’s here that the shortness of the quake clearly saved us: most of that lesser damage is in joints of the wood, which have come loose but not completely apart. That all needs considerablerepair, but only the doors of the building actually fell (and a lot of stuff: file cabinets fell over, shelves collapsed, that kind of thing). The lighting system was seriously shook up, but as far as we can tell so far no major damage (we’re not real sure because there is no electricity in thatzone of the city – a number of transformers fell downtown, which seems to be the reason for that). The house right across the street from us (also an ex-fruit company building) fell.
So we’re spending the day picking up the pieces – literally.

I haven’t been able to get much reliable info yet on what was the damage in the rest of the country. There are serious alerts in all the coastal towns for the possibility of some sort of tsunami-like thing, but that danger seems to me to be very remote. There seems to have been only one certified death in this area, a child in San Manuel (near Lima).
teatro la fragua
apartado 70
el progreso, yoro
honduras, c.a.
(504)647-0974fax: (504)647-0907
teatrolafragua@EcologyFund.net
teatrolafragua@gmail.com
http://www.fragua.org

Bombing of Catholic Church in Kathmandu

The Detroit Province has long had a relationship with the people and Jesuits of Kathmandu, Nepal. Please read the above story about a bombing of the Church of the Assumption, Kathmandu's only Roman Catholic place of worship.

African Americans and the Auto Industry

As we have been hearing much about the automakers' bailout by the US Government, I thought it interesting to share this article from the New York Times in today's (12/30/08) issue and offer it up to all of you for prayer and reflection.

Some of the statistics that are offered in this article really highlight the difference between this industry and say, the financial/banking area. "In all, blacks made up 14.2 percent of the total automotive work force in 2007, according to the policy institute report, compared with 11.2 percent of the overall American work force."

A study from the US Equal Opportunity Employment Commission states the following statistics: Within the Financial Industry subsectors, the percentage of African American officials and managers is highest in the Banking/Credit subsector (7.0 percent) with over 9.7 percent in overall professional jobs in this sector. In the Securities subsector, African Americans made up 4.4 percent in officials and managers but 7.0 percent of the professional jobs. The highest percentage of professional positions in the financial industry subsectors for African Americans is in the Central Banking area at just about 13.3 percent.

So, as we move forward in 2009, with this economy and the hard economic times ahead, let us remember that our language does matter and that we need to be aware of the complexity of these situations. I can't help but imagine that the commentary on the auto industry has been vitriolic because of our own prejudices about minorities, labor unions and the competition between the middle class and the poor.