There’s nothing worse in the world than finding ourselves caught
in a helpless situation. We’ve been trapped in one of those
situations. When a catastrophe like Hurricane Katrina happens, it
brings me nightmares and goose bumps of what we went through. In
1958, the island of Faial in the Azores, where we grew up and were
living, went through a very scary experience.
Editor,
There’s nothing worse in the world than finding ourselves caught in a helpless situation. We’ve been trapped in one of those situations. When a catastrophe like Hurricane Katrina happens, it brings me nightmares and goose bumps of what we went through. In 1958, the island of Faial in the Azores, where we grew up and were living, went through a very scary experience.
One day, the island started shaking violently. We were shaking with over 300 earthquakes in the first 24 hours and continued until the monster volcano erupted. There were no causalities because everybody ran out of their homes and slept out in the rain without much protection. People were evacuated from the most hard hit areas. It was so sad to see the old people and children dragged from here to there in the rain with no shelter and short of everything. Many houses crumbled. Many were almost destroyed.
The ocean looked furious, like it was going to swallow the island. This volcano erupted one mile off of the island in the ocean, throwing rocks and sand 1,250 feet in the air. We could see monster rocks going up and crumble, splashing in the water. Then came the lava. That was scary, but beautiful to watch. It started to connect with the island extending the island over one mile.
One thing I experienced with this situation was that people united, worked together, prayed together and helped the more unfortunate without complaining. In this situation, everybody is poor and needs one another – just going with the mercy of God. Still there are some bad hearts that take advantage of the situation. Our hearts have been with the people of New Orleans and the other areas that have been affected. We will try to help in the ways we can, as much as we can and argue to remember that tomorrow it might be us. Nobody is exempt of some kind of tragedy.
I remember the Loma Prieta Earthquake and the help we got from far away. It’s always good to be prepared. God works in mysterious ways. We should offer our prayers to the unfortunate people who got caught in this terrible situation and hope the ones who died find the peace with God for the good of their souls. For the ones who survived, I hope we can make them as comfortable as we can as much as we can. They deserve our cooperation. I’d like to thank God for the dry land where we stand. We have the obligation to open our arms if some of these people ever plan to come around and ask for help. I hope God has mercy on us all. This is straight form my heart.
Amadeu Lima, Hollister
