Word: reliefer
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Despite that rapid and spontaneous outpouring, rescue work at Armero proceeded at a slow and frustrating pace. The torrential mudslides washed away roads and bridges, limiting efforts to deliver both rescuers and relief supplies. Foul weather and the continuing down pour of volcanic ash from the smoking mountain kept Colombian helicopters away from Armero until Thursday afternoon. Only on Friday could the U.S. fly in any of the big CH-47 Chinook helicopters, capable of evacuating dozens of people at a time. In the interim, only nine small helicopters, able to carry just a handful of victims each, had flown...
...number of survivors increased, however, so did the size of the relief problem. In the nearby towns of Mariquita and Guayabal, hospital facilities were immediately overwhelmed. At Mariquita, authorities were laying out the wounded on any available surface, from black plastic garbage bags to burlap coffee sacks. Mudslide victims were being wrapped in tablecloths, curtains, anything that local citizens could spare. Dazed survivors, still covered with mud, roamed the town's streets looking for lost loved ones...
...rescue helicopters took off and landed on a grassy slope beside a lake of mud where a town once stood. A crew of 78 rescuers occupied the area, rushing gray-caked victims in stretchers made from coffee bags strung between poles. Badly overworked and undersupplied, the crew viewed the relief situation as increasingly desperate. "We are working against time," said Raúl Alferez, a Colombian Red Cross worker. "There are still a lot of people out there to be rescued, and we are not getting to them...
...homeless by the quake, a total of 50,000 by government estimates, or as many as 150,000 by unofficial counts. There are no sanitary facilities in the encampment; periodically, municipal trucks distribute small plastic bags of potable water. Along with a few donated blankets, that is all the relief aid that the tent dwellers have seen. Says Julieta López Uribe, 63, a camp resident: "The government has forgotten about...
Much of the disenchantment stems from bitterness at the pace of the recovery program. Inevitably, there have been charges that relief money has been misappropriated. The government, however, claims that the relief effort so far has been a success. Presidential Spokesman Manuel Alonso predicts that the needs of all those left homeless by the quake will be met "by March at the latest...