Central America struggling to implement lessons from Hurricane Mitch
This week sees the tenth anniversary of Hurricane Mitch, one of the most powerful and deadly hurricanes on record in Central America. In late October 1998, as Mitch roared through Honduras and Nicaragua, deaths due to severe flooding and landslides made it the second deadliest Atlantic hurricane in history. When it left, on November 3, nearly 11,000people were dead and over 8,000 were still missing by the end of the year.
Ten years later, another storm is currently cutting a swathe through similar territory. Tropical Depression 16, which is far weaker than a hurricane, made landfall in northern Honduras on October 16, and has left a trail of destruction across Central America. In Honduras alone, over 30 people have been killed; 8,500 houses have been flooded and over 40,000 people have been evacuated into emergency shelters. To date, over 200,000 people have been affected by floods and landslides.
If a Tropical Depression can wreak such havoc ten years after Mitch, the question arises: why are the people of Central America still so vulnerable to disasters?
One answer is that the problems that led to the Mitch disaster have largely been left unresolved. Reconstruction in the aftermath of Mitch largely missed the opportunities on offer to reduce the root causes of the damage and destruction, such as relocating families living on flood plains. Poor natural resource management, and in particular high deforestation levels, continue to increase the risk of flooding in low lying areas.
At the same time, uncontrolled urban expansion fuelled by poor migrants from rural areas, means that a vast proportion of the urban poor continue to live in poor quality housing on river flood plains or on steep, unstable slops. These hundreds of thousands continue to be extremely vulnerable to disasters.
What we call ‘Disaster Risk Reduction' - minimizing the exposure of communities to the harshest effects of disasters - has not been a high priority of Central America governments since Mitch. For example, it was widely recognised that the national emergencies law in Honduras was ineffective during Hurricane Mitch but, ten years later and despite many efforts by civil society groups (including Trócaire partners) nothing has changed. The national emergency system still operates with a tiny budget of around US$1,000,000 each year.
DRR has been a huge priority for Trócaire in the region. One of the most important impacts of our work has been helping vulnerable communities in high-risk areas to better prepare themselves for disasters. I
t is a simple fact that disasters will happen: we must therefore help communities to control as much as possible how those disasters affect them.
Our DRR work includes organising community emergency committees and training them to respond in the first hours after a disaster before national or international help arrives. This includes developing emergency response plans, the provision of emergency equipment including radios, first aid kits, rescue gear and providing basic sanitation and kitchen facilities to emergency shelters.
We have also worked on relocating houses to safer areas and, in the case of Guatemala after Hurricane Stan in 2005, entire communities. After Mitch, recovery in the region largely concerned itself with the reconstruction of the physical damage. Pressure was placed on the Central America governments to place DRR higher up their agendas. Generally speaking, important infrastructure such as industrial zones and airports has now been adequately protected which will help greatly in any future recovery operation.
Unfortunately however, as is too often the case, little has been done to protect those people most vulnerable to disasters in the region. These people are, of course, the region's poorest.
