VALDOSTA — Pat Cordova is both a long-time Valdosta resident and a Chile native. She is asking her adopted home to aid the earthquake-damaged land of her birth.
On Feb. 27, Cordova spent a harrowing day. A phone call awakened Cordova at her Valdosta home with news of the 8.8-magnitude earthquake in Chile. Throughout the day, she repeatedly attempted to call her mother, younger sisters, nieces, nephews and other family still living in Chile.
As documented in an account last week in The Valdosta Daily Times, Cordova learned her family had survived the quake uninjured first through Facebook then, finally, reaching her relatives by phone.
In last week’s article, Cordova said her family was doing well, having suffered damage mostly to the interiors of their homes.
Now, in an e-mail to friends, she shares her family’s reports on Chile’s devastation.
“Initially, I was only concerned with contacting my family and making sure they were fine,” Cordova notes. “Then, the real extent of the damage to the central area of Chile was clear to me, and now Joe (Cordova, Pat’s husband) and I are trying to do anything we can to help the people who lost relatives, homes, businesses, jobs and all their possessions.”
Pat Cordova says the quake destroyed an estimated 500,000 homes.
“Two million people (12.5 percent of the population of the country) were left without homes, clothing or food,” Cordova notes. “Many schools and hospitals, large and small, were destroyed or badly damaged, as were power, water and other essential services.”
She opens her e-mail message with a simple declaration: “Two million Chileans need your help.”
Cordova came to the U.S. in 1969 as a Rotary Foundation scholar attending the University of Georgia. She fell in love with Georgia, and she returned here to live, but she has remained close to her Chilean roots. She recently spent several weeks in Chile visiting family. She had returned from Chile a little more than two weeks before the earthquake.
The Valdosta Rotary Foundation has offered its help by opening a relief account under the name of Chile Fund at Guardian Bank, says Cordova, adding she is “eternally grateful” for any help South Georgians can give to the people of Chile.