Disaster Relief Central America

The International Red Cross on Monday said that it would need about $7.4 million to help victims of massive flooding and mudslides across Central America. Honduras and Nicaragua were particularly hard hit, with thousands of people feared dead and hundreds of thousands driven from their homes. In Washington, President Clinton said the U.S. would provide $2 million in food, medicine, water and other emergency supplies.

Maria Corina Artola has never been wealthy or even financially comfortable. But Friday, she was the poorest she has ever been. Little by little over the years, she had established herself as a street vendor, earning enough to support her four children in a shack along an open sewer. That was until tropical storm Mitch washed it all away.

The Clinton administration and international donor organizations, heeding a warning from four Central American presidents that the ravages of Hurricane Mitch are endangering democracy in their countries, pledged more than $1 billion Thursday in relief and interest-free loans to the devastated region. "You are our neighbors, our friends, our partners," Undersecretary of State Stuart E. Eizenstat said during an emergency meeting of the visiting presidents and a group of donor organizations.