Earthquake in Peru : How can WE help

As you will probably know by now, Peru was hit by the worst earth quake in the past 50 years last Wednesday evening, August 6^th at 6.40 pm Local Time. Epicenter was 60 km off the coast of Ica, some 200 km south of Lima. 2 consequent quakes, the first of which measured 8.0 on the Richter Scale and the second 7.6, shook the whole South of Peru for 2 minutes and destroyed the cities of Ica and Pisco and their surrounding areas almost completely. Thus far 510 people are confirmed killed, 1600 injured, 17,000 houses destroyed and over 85,000 people homeless or otherwise affected by this tragedy.

Having lived in Peru for nearly 7 years, this hits Karin , myself and the CAT Team in a very direct way as lots of people are suffering right now. We have a lot of friends and colleagues in the area, so our thoughts are with them and their families at this time as we hear more terrible stories on the news.

Besides the human side of the catastrophe, we've also received news that there are many tourist sites have been damaged in the Paracas/Pisco Area, including the famous Catedral de Paracas , and the Mummies Museum...we still don't know the latest situation of "El Candelabro" or the Ballesta Islands.

At CAT we all have been extremely lucky as so far our team members, families and friends in Peru were saved from this dreadful experience. One of our team members has her family living in Ica but apart from their house being destroyed, miraculously they too were spared. Still many, many people are in direct need of help and as rescue operations are starting , we would like to call for your help as well to help the people in the Ica and Pisco region. Please click on the following link to see what you can do to help relieve the worst anguish for those most in need: http://www.cat-travel.com/Peru-Earthquake-Help.asp

If you can, please be so kind to cut and paste this html banners in your blog or e-mail signature to let people know how can they help.

If this banner format doesn't fit you, please find other variations here:
http://www.cat-travel.com/Peru-Earthquake-Banners.asp

Thank you very much in advance for your generosity; the people in Peru will be better of thanks to you.

Bart