When a massive earthquake hit Peru on Wednesday and generated international headlines, Holly Braun of Mount Vernon was there.
“She said it was the longest two minutes of life,” her mother, Carol Annema of Bow said on Friday. “She actually thought everything was going to cave in around her.”
Braun, 22, is spending seven months in Peru as part of a program with Wheaton College in Illinois. Working with the Human Needs and Global Resources Program, Braun is living in the village of Ayacucho, 9,000 feet up in the Andes Mountains and 10 hours by bus from Lima.
But on Tuesday and Wednesday, Braun was in Lima visiting a women’s prison, Annema said. One of her college professors came to Peru to see how she was working with the program. After visiting the prison, Braun and her professor went to dinner and then to a friend’s 12th-floor apartment where they were planning to stay.
That evening, the magnitude-8.0 quake struck.
The quake was centered about 125 miles southeast of the capital. But Annema said Braun told her there was still massive damage in the city. After the quake, Braun and others in the apartment building rushed outside to find “chaos.” There was no electricity, and people were scurrying to find missing family members. Eventually, Braun and her companions went back inside.
“She decided it was safer inside than outside because of the masses of people,” Annema said.
But then the dozens of aftershocks began — including 18 registering magnitude 5 or greater.
Several tense hours passed after the initial quake before Annema heard from her daughter. Annema was in the Atlanta airport Wednesday, waiting for a flight back to Seattle, when Braun called to chat with her mother about her professor’s visit and their trip to the women’s prison. A short time later, Annema saw the news alert about the earthquake on the in-flight news channel. She was with her 7-year-old son whom she didn’t want to frighten.
“I couldn’t panic,” she said. “It was one of those things I just said, ‘OK God ... you handle it.’”
Annema didn’t hear from her daughter that night. But the next morning she received an e-mail and saw a posting on Braun’s blog.
“I’m alive, safe and well!” the entry was titled.
Braun wrote that she and her professor were able to get on a flight to Ayacucho on Thursday morning. She told her mother she thought she could be of help most by returning there and helping coordinate volunteers or relief efforts that were being sent to Lima. The destruction at the village was less than in Lima, Annema said.
After returning to the village, Braun was able to find a working phone line and called her mother Thursday night for about 10 minutes.
Braun grew up in Mount Vernon and graduated from Mount Vernon Christian School before attending Wheaton, a Christian liberal arts college. She’ll graduate in May with degrees in Spanish and communications. She spent a year in Costa Rica when she was a sophomore in college and is spending her time in Peru teaching English and working with women affected by domestic violence and HIV/AIDS. Now many people are focusing efforts on recovering from the quake.
“The Peruvian people whom she has come to love so much were just distraught,” Annema said. “They lost homes and have loved ones missing. (Braun’s) never dealt with that.”
But she said her daughter has expressed how much she’s come to appreciate the situation of those she works with and those who find a sense of community and kinship even in poverty.
“To have nothing and to lose what you do have, seeing that situation was really difficult for her,” Annema said.
But Annema said her “adventurous, passionate and spirited” daughter is not planning to cut her time there short.
“Please continue in your prayers for the people of Peru as people have lost homes and family,” Braun wrote on her blog.
* Margaret Friedenauer can be reached at 360-416-2147 or mfriedenauer@skagitvalley herald.com.
