Cuenca’s earthquake response has been phenomenal. Almost immediately after the earthquake Saturday night Cuenca put a plan in place to help with the disaster.

Mayor Cabrera dispatched about 87 firefighters to Manabi Province to provide rescue and recovery assistance. About 50 medical professionals, nurses and doctors from Cuenca went to Manabi Province by bus to treat the injured. Also a number of security personal were sent.

Thousands of residents in Cuenca have been flocking to the super mercados and filling up shopping carts with bottled water, non perishable food, toiletries, etc. From there they are taken to drop off locations throughout the city. The need in the impacted areas was immediate and this is the fastest way to get supplies there.

Here are a couple shots of one of the drop off locations at Parque Calderon.

 

There’s a drop off location on the plaza at Parque de la Madre also. It’s the one I’ve been using, twice so far.

Cuenca has numerous drop off locations throughout the city for residents to take the items for sorting by volunteers. After the items are sorted and put in cardboard boxes, the boxes are taped closed and labeled. From there they go to a centralized location where the boxes are prioritized, loaded on to trucks and headed out to the hardest hit areas in Manabi Province on the coast.

Our two main super mercados, Coral and Supermaxi have locations throughout the city. All of them have drop off locations immediately outside the stores.

Early Tuesday morning a dozen trucks loaded with supplies headed out to Manabi Province from Cuenca. One of them was a container loaded with 82 tons of supplies. That’s just Tuesday morning. I’m sure there were many more before and they’ll be many more to come.

Mayor Cabrera wants us to keep it coming.

Many international relief organizations have extended their work to the region in the aftermath of the quake. Check out more about each organization’s area of focus — and how you can donate to help fund their efforts — here.