They lived that way for a month until ShelterBox provided them a tent to erect where their house once stood. “The tent is very helpful,” said Erti. “We feel safe inside.” Though the family is “healing and life is slowly getting better,” they’re unsure what comes next. “We have no idea [what we’re going to do],” said Jonathan. “It could take up to ten months to fix the house. We might move. We are just focusing on the now.”
By day, Eric Schalla is a mild-mannered supervisor at the Tri-Co Reprographics print shop over on East Haley Street. A Cal Poly graduate and family man, his regular work week looks like any of ours. But should the call come, even in the middle of the night, he’s ready to pack his bag and jet to some far corner of the world.
Schalla, also a former logistics specialist in the Marine Corps, is a member of ShelterBox USA’s elite team of field volunteers who deliver their patented tents and tools of survival to refugees displaced by war and natural disasters. The relief organization is an affiliate of ShelterBox Trust in England, and, in 2015, they opened an office in Summerland. In 2017 alone, they provided shelter and aid to more than 160,000 people in 23 countries, including in the fallout from Hurricane Harvey in Texas, during the Rohingya refugee crisis in Bangladesh, and in the midst of the severe drought in Somaliland. After Montecito’s 1/9 Debris Flow, they handed out supplies from the Vons parking lot.
Schalla’s latest deployment was to northern Iraq, where thousands of Syrian refugees had settled into makeshift camps. It was Schalla’s job to ensure ShelterBox tents — heavy-duty, custom-made structures that can sleep a family of 10 — were distributed to those who needed them most. “It’s very rewarding because you’re right there on the ground,” he said. “It’s people helping people.”