HARRIS WHITBECK, INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: We covered an earthquake in Armenia in Columbia at the beginning of 1999. There were whole city blocks that were just completely leveled. They couldn't even identify where their houses were, the destruction was so vast.</s>WHITBECK (voice-over): "Only God knows how I got out of there alive," he says, after describing how his wife was crushed by a falling wall.</s>WHITBECK: It was just a very, very shocking image to see all these people literally just camped out there, waiting for something to happen.</s>WHITBECK: The sense of despair in this neighborhood is overwhelming. Those who dare to even think of a future seem to think of nothing else but getting out.</s>BILL DELANEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): "There's hunger, no work," Miriam Garcia (ph) said. Twenty-five members of the Garcia family in all now headed for relatives in the capital, Bogota.</s>WHITBECK: For days after the earthquake had hit, relief workers from the government and from NGOs had a lot of trouble in getting into the area, and at one point survivors were so desperate that they just stormed into the central market in downtown Armenia, started looting, started taking bags of rice, bags of sugar, whatever they can find. Looking back on it now, I'm not sure that I can blame them. People were very, very desperate and were very, very hungry.
CNN 20: Earthquake in Columbia, January 25, 1999