Eleven-year-old Sandra and her family lived near the beach of Dichato, until their house was wiped out by the tsunami which followed the 8.8 Chile earthquake on Feb. 27, 2010. They lost everything.

“All of a sudden there was a layer of fog and behind the fog was the water. The first wave was big. I saw when it broke on the shore. I saw how the houses moved, how they ran into each other, how they moved this way and that,” recalled Sandra, who is still traumatised by what she saw that night.

After the earthquake, Sandra and her family spent a few days camping in makeshift tents in the hills above Dichato, because they feared that the large aftershocks would generate another tsunami wave. But, they were forced to take shelter in a storage area of another family when they met with rain less than a week later.

The room they were housed in was a little more than 10 square metres and piled high with boxes and bags. There was just one double mattress.
“We all sleep together in one bed,” said Sandra, who noted she had not been sleeping well since the earthquake.

As a mother, Gabriella finds herself helpless and unable to do more for her children. “My son said, ‘I don’t want to live in this house. I want to go home,’ I told him there’s no more house left down there,’” she said.

Recognising her plight, as well as the situation of many other displaced families in Dichato, World Vision distributed new four by four metre tents to nearly 100 recipients. Gabriella, one of the recipients, said with a smile, “This is going to help us. We are going to be independent.” Her family now has a space they can call their own.

Most importantly, her children are going to be more comfortable as well. “Sandra will be able to sleep by herself,” she said, allowing her to be more comfortable and providing her with a little bit of normalcy in her life again.

Thanks to World Vision, about 600 families will now have a space to start all over again.