Scenes of workers digging through the rubble to search for survivors of the 7.4-magnitude earthquake in Colombia are hard for one Escondido woman to watch.
Adriana Brunner, a board member of MANA de San Diego, has families in Cali, Colombia, one of the cities devastated by the quake.
“I wish I could be there to pick one of those rocks, but I cannot be there," she said. "It's very hard.”
Brunner lived there before she moved to the U.S.
"I was looking at the city and saying, ' Oh, in that building I had a friend who lived there.' The building is not there," she said. "'Oh, I used to go to the bakery. The bakery is not there. So a lot of those iconic points in the city are not there."
The first 72 hours of a disaster are crucial for finding anyone who might still be alive. As of Thursday evening, the death toll was 281, and the window for survival is narrowing. That reality is not lost on Brunner.
"I know that there are human lives under (the rubble)," she said. "You know, it kills you."
Since Monday, she's been on the phone and on social media trying to raise funds and collect items for the relief effort, such as emergency kits, clothes and diapers. That's her way to decompress, she said.
The Colombian community in San Diego is doing the same. There are an estimated 11,000 Colombians in San Diego. On Wednesday, Antojitos Colombianos Restaurant in Barrio Logan held a donation drive. Dozens of people answered the call.
They arrived with boxes and boxes of supplies for Colombia. Andres Rodriguez, the restaurant's manager, said he's grateful that San Diegans stepped up to help.
"That's not the restaurant. It’s everybody," he said. "Everybody puts something, a little bit of something.”
Rodriguez felt the same frustration that Brunner felt, of not being there to help. But he said this is one way he's helping.
"We can just do something from (far) away," he said.
Brunner said the best way to help right now is to donate money to reputable organizations supporting the relief effort. These are the organizations she said are leading the effort:
The House of Colombia is also raising funds for the relief effort.
