After Mitch

The flood waters of Hurricane Mitch are receeding, revealing what Honduran President Carlos Flores Facusse calls a “panorama of death.” To others, it is a catastrophe of Biblical proportions, a hellish vision out of Dante.

In Nicaragua, rescue workers hear cries coming from within the mud that once was a cluster of villages at the foot of Casitas volcano, but are powerless to help. The few survivors from the dozens of buried towns cannot describe the wave of water and earth that overtook them. That country’s defense minister, Pedro Joaquin Chamorro Barrios, says the only thing that can be done is to seal off the entire area and declare it a national cemetery.

More than 7,000 died in the floods and mudslides spawned by Mitch. Many more will die of the disease — epidemics of cholera and dengue fever, in particular — that will follow. Farms, livestock, ripening crops, food warehouses, even the roads and bridges that can bring food and water to stricken areas — all are destroyed. As many as 1 million are homeless.

Even the most affluent region would struggle to recover from this. Two of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere don’t have a chance unless the world helps, unless it hears the plea of President Flores Facusse for “human solidarity.”

The U.S. Agency for International Development is providing $3.5 million in emergency assistance — food, water, medicine. The Red Cross has launched a campaign to raise $7.4 million for relief.

This is a start, but it is barely enough to keep the survivors alive, certainly not even close to what it will take to rebuild two countries that have lost everything and have nothing with which to rebuild. Aid from the governments of all developed nations is necessary and is likely to come, but when time is running short, the money donated made to charitable aid agencies moves fastest. Here are a few that are accepting contributions to aid Central American flood victims:

American Red Cross, International Response Fund, P.O. Box 37243, Washington, D.C. 20013, telephone 1-800-HELP-NOW.

Salvation Army, World Service Office, 615 Slaters Lane, Alexandria, Va. 22313, telephone 1-703-684-5528.

Save the Children, P.O. Box 975-M, 54 Wilton Road, Westport, Conn. 06880, telephone 1-800-243-5075.

Imagine that 7,000 Americans were killed in a natural disaster. Imagine that an area the size of New England were buried alive. Imagine that your neighbors were facing starvation and disease. Do what you can.