With radio listeners donating basic foodstuffs, pure water and cash for flood victims in Ecuador's coastal provinces, a medical team with HCJB Global Hands has joined a relief effort by mission agencies and non-governmental organizations.

"The radio spot is playing," said Duval Rueda of Radio Station HCJB in Quito, on Wednesday, Feb. 27. Donations soon began arriving as listeners heard of the opportunity with $200 and 40 pounds of food arriving at the station and three other drop-off points in Quito in the first hour after it was on the air.

The same day Dr. Galo Nuáez led the first of three emergency medical response teams from the mission's Vozandes hospitals in Quito and Shell to hard-hit Babahoyo in the coastal province of Los Ríos. The teams, each serving for a week, hope to provide care and spiritual encouragement for up to 2,000 patients and provide food and supplies to many more.

The first international team, comprised of three Ecuadorian doctors from the mission's Hospital Vozandes-Quito, a U.S. nurse from Vozandes Community Development and an Ecuadorian logistics person from the Hospital Vozandes-Shell, is already on the scene. Future teams will also include staff members from Australia, Germany and the U.K.

Dan Maloy, operations director of partner ministry Extreme Response International, told of seeing "miles and miles of water on both sides of the road" covering many pastures. "I saw soccer goals sticking out of the water."

Ecuadorian Agriculture Minister Walter Poveda has warned of possible rice shortages with nearly 272,000 acres of crops destroyed by rising waters.

To continue raising listener awareness, Rueda plans additional on-air interviews with Oscar Aguirre, coordinator the food donations, as well as Hermann Schirmacher of HCJB Global's Latin America Ministry Center and Alejandro Quintero, president of the Pastoral Association in Quito.

The medical team is also working with Samaritan's Purse which is establishing a base of operations at Babahoyo. The two ministries have collaborated on disaster response efforts following an earthquake in Ica, Peru, last August and more recently in the late-2007 flooding in southern Mexico.

After torrential rains and a month of flooding, Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa declared all 24 provinces in a state of emergency, putting the army in charge of the nation's emergency operation. A soldier was accidentally electrocuted on Tuesday, Feb. 26, during the assistance effort, bringing the death toll in the flooding to 17.

The number affected by flooding or by landslides has grown to 300,000, with some evacuated from their homes amid waist-deep waters. A newspaper photo shows Correa wading through knee-deep, tan-colored waters during a visit to affected areas.

Aguirre, a businessman who directs a feeding and education ministry through an English-language church, is supervising volunteers receiving donated supplies. Then they make up basic foodstuffs baskets for flood victims.

Each basket consists of rice, beans, lentils, cooking oil, sugar, noodles, flower, oatmeal, tuna, salt, milk, and toiletries. As basic baskets are ready, they will be sent with additional teams heading to Babahoyo.

The team sensed God at work in that needed medicines arrived in a timely way, and that monthly meetings of Committee for Response to Emergencies and Disasters "started as disaster preparedness and moved to disaster response."

The family practice physician says a "group of like-minded individuals" from backgrounds in missions, government foreign service, humanitarian aid or the petroleum industry had begun to form strategies for disaster response.

"It turned into a real exercise, and we're all working together," he said.

Participating in a recent Wheaton College theology of development course in Quito, Rodrigo Caín of Hospital Vozandes-Shell had told staff of his availability for such trips. "Well, within a week I was on the phone with him saying, 'Hey, I need your help!'"