On Wednesday, August 15th, Anibal Monteblanco was scheduled to give a talk on Earthquake safety at the South American Explorers club. This presentation was interrupted by one of the largest Earthquakes to strike Peru in years. I wrote Anibal an e-mail asking him to make a contribution to this month´s ACAP magazine, and he responded with the following article about the YCPA (Yanapasayki Cuerpo Peruano de Ayuda), a charitable organization that is working to help the people affected by the earthquake in the rural areas of Cañete.

We have focused on Cañete because from our previous experience with disasters in Perú we have found that the remote rural areas are often the most affected but frequently get almost no help.

This proved to be the case in Cañete when we discovered three days after the quake that we were the first assessment team deployed in that area.

One week after the assessment, we were able to send a truck with relief goods and donations for these people thanks to the generous help and donations received from friends and people that heard our call for help.

The expatriates list members were the most generous and for them the people from the towns on the left wing of the Cañete valley are thankful forever.

From the preliminary assessment urgent needs became known. One of the most critical issues is the state of the irrigation channels that were severely damaged by the earthquake. The people of Cañete are farmers and their crops are in danger of being lost if the channels are not repaired soon. For the people of Cañete, the loss of their crops would be potentially more devastating than the earthquake itself.

We recently went back twice to rural Cañete along with Edwin Mitchell, a expat list member, and Freddy Monteblanco, a Peruvian who lives in the USA, to make complementary assessments of the irrigation channels to acquire more accurate information as to the real situation of the irrigation channels in order to plan further aid.

On our first assessment, done on Tuesday September 4th, we visited the extensive farming area surrounding Cañete. We found that the earthquake had severely affected about 40 km of the drain channels and some sections of the farming lands had sunk into the ground as much as 2 meters below their original level. The land is cracked everywhere. The consequence of the damage is that the underground streams of water are flowing up to the surface because the drain channels have collapsed. This, in turn, means that the farming lands are getting flooded from the bottom. The estimated affected area is about 15,928 hectares according to the data provided by the local agriculture officials.

The solution for this problem is to repair the drain channels with heavy machinery to prevent this land and this year's crops from being lost.

On the second complementary assessment done on Friday, September 7th, we visited the rural area on the left wing of the Cañete valley. Here the problem is different. The irrigation channel that waters this lands is affected by leaking water. The earthquake has cracked the ground under the channel and lots of water is being lost.

The consequence of this is that the underground stream of water is severely affecting the soil compactness and causing a rapid erosion. This could lead to a dangerous landslide that will affect the rural road, the farming lands, and parts of the nearby towns. Furthermore, the present and immediate consequence of the loss of water is that not enough water is reaching the furthest lands where crops are in danger of being lost.

The solution for this problem is to repair the irrigation channels immediately by reinforcing and protecting the channel walls and bottom with concrete to avoid the loss of water and stop the underground erosion.

If you would like to get in contact with the YCPA, to offer assistance, or donations, please contact Aníbal Paredes Monteblanco at: 4337981 or yanapasayki@yahoo.es. Or please visit the YCPA website for further information: www.geocities.com/yanapasayki. Pictures for this article were taken from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/yanapasayki/