ABSTRACT
On August 15, 2007, an 8.0 Magnitude earthquake struck the coastal area of Peru just south of Lima. Leticia Quispe lived with her family in El Carmen, an informal settlement just outside the town of Chincha, that was heavily affected by the earthquake. She and her husband had put all their savings into a house for which they were still paying off a mortgage loan. They saw it crumble before their eyes in just three minutes. While losing their dwelling was bad enough, it meant an even greater loss for Leticia. She had been running a nursery in her house, so she also lost her workplace and source of income (Schilderman and Watanabe, 2014).
