Helping Southern Mexico Respond to Massive Flooding
(English * Español)
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The capital of Tabasco resembled a lake. |
January 2008
Torrential rains caused serious widespread
flooding and hundreds of landslides throughout
southern Mexico in late October and
early November 2007. The disaster affected
more than 1.2 million people and caused
significant damage to roads, bridges, dams,
houses, vehicles, livestock and crops, according
to the Government of Mexico.
Thousands of residents were evacuated to
temporary shelters in Tabasco and Chiapas,
the hardest-hit states. At least 19 people
were killed during the disaster, which some
compared to the situation in New Orleans, in
the U.S. state of Louisiana, following Hurricane
Katrina in 2005. Mexico’s General Coordinator
of Civil Protection, which manages
the federal government’s emergency assistance,
reported that nearly 480,000 homes in
Tabasco and 4,700 homes in Chiapas suffered
flood damage.
In response, the U.S. Agency for International
Development’s Office of U.S. Foreign
Disaster Assistance (USAID/OFDA) deployed
a five-person team of disaster experts beginning
November 1 to help conduct damage assessments
in flood-ravaged areas and determine
priority needs of affected residents.
USAID/OFDA also provided $50,000 in immediate
assistance for the local purchase of
temporary shelter materials for 350 families
from the waterlogged Tabasco state capital
Villahermosa, which resembled a lake with
rooftops poking through. Soon after, it provided
nearly $250,000 to the Red Cross for
the purchase and distribution of relief supplies
such as hygiene kits, kitchen kits, mosquito
nets, water buckets, and containers.
As assistance for flood victims flowed into the
Tabasco airport from across the country and
the world in a somewhat haphazard manner,
Mexican officials become a bit overwhelmed.
‘They simply weren’t expecting the quantity
of supplies that started coming in,” said
USAID/OFDA team member Pedro Soto, a
Mexico-based consultant who helped local
authorities connect with emergency supply
management software operator FUNDESUMA,
part of the Pan-American Health Organization
(PAHO). He also advised officials on
the logistics of distributing relief items to affected
residents and provided follow-up as
supplies were delivered.
USAID/OFDA disaster experts also provided
technical assistance to Mexican authorities
to develop a working plan for damage assessment
and needs analysis.
“Mexico is very well prepared for hurricanes –
this was evident during its response to Hurricane
Dean (several months earlier) – but it’s
a bit less prepared for this type of massive
flooding. Authorities were a bit disorganized
during the first few days. Fortunately they
were able to use all their resources to get organized
fairly quickly, and our consultants
were able to help them with this,” said
USAID/OFDA Regional Advisor René Carrillo,
who traveled to Mexico to lead the team.
“With hurricanes you have much more advance
warning,” Carrillo explained. “In this
case, Mexican authorities didn’t have any
advance warning. The river overflowed, and
all the sudden everything was flooded.”
Soto and USAID/OFDA consultants Oscar
Mejía and Alejandro Torres worked with officials
on the ground in Tabasco and Chiapas
for two weeks.
“Because the consultants already had an excellent
working relationship with emergency
officials in Mexico (through the USAID/OFDA
Training and Technical Assistance Program
run by the International Resources Group
(IRG) in Latin American and the Caribbean),
they were able to work alongside officials in
the government’s emergency operations
headquarters. This was possible thanks to
the relationship of trust that Pedro, Oscar
and Alejandro had already developed with
Mexican officials before the disaster hit,”
Carrillo said.
This was key to the overall success of the operation,
he said. “USAID/OFDA consultants
were able to help push things along, and
even suggest ways the Government of Mexico
could improve its overall response efforts.
This was of great value to the country.”
Another example of the benefits afforded by
previously established relationships is that
during the response, USAID/OFDA consultants
invited 20 Red Cross workers from
Guadalajara, who had previously received
USAID/OFDA training through IRG, to work
with them on damage assessment and needs
analysis in Tabasco.
“What we did is present a model for damage
assessment to federal authorities, who have
no national standard for these types of assessments.
We organized a pilot of the
USAID/OFDA damage assessment tool in
Jalpa de Méndez, one of the nine mostaffected
municipalities in Tabasco, with the
participation of Red Cross workers we had
previously trained, along with members of
various state units of Civil Protection. What
we sought was validation of the damage assessment
tool, not for us but for top Mexican
officials, so they could consider adopting it
on a nationwide basis,” Soto explained.
“This response was unique in that it featured
25 different state emergency management
units at the disaster site, all with their own
way of doing things. Our pilot served a double
purpose. First, it satisfied a need for information
during the response. And second,
we sought to convince national authorities to
accept the tool and implement it nationwide
after this response,” he added.
The pilot was a success, he said. “In less
than 24 hours we had the operation under
way, and in another 24 hours the General
Coordinator of Civil Protection had in her
hands a technical report of the damage assessment
in Jalpa de Méndez. She said it
was exactly what she required to make informed
decisions. Now, we are seeking the
nationwide adoption of the tool so that all the
state units have a standard method of damage
assessment.”
One of the main concerns during the response
was that standing water would lead
to increased rates of water-borne, respiratory
and skin diseases. To support the efforts of
Mexico’s National Water Commission (CONAGUA)
in this area, USAID/OFDA provided
funding for 95 water pumps on November 6.
It also gave funding through USAID/Mexico
to purchase 2,000 cots for affected families.
Members of the USAID/OFDA assessment
team, the U.N. Disaster Assessment and Coordination
(UNDAC) team and Civil Protection
staff conducted an aerial assessment on
November 8 to evaluate damages in Villahermosa
and the area around San Juan
Grijalva in Chiapas State, where a landslide
November 5 buried much of the town and
killed at least 14 people. On November 9,
Paul Bonicelli, USAID’s Assistant Administrator
for Latin America and the Caribbean,
U.S. Ambassador Antonio O. Garza, and Red
Cross leaders from the United States and
Mexico visited flood-affected communities.
To help with more long-term shelter, health
and sanitation issues, USAID/OFDA has
provided funds to World Vision ($886,765),
Samaritan’s Purse ($170,391) and Project
Concern International ($917,372). All in all,
USAID/OFDA contributed more than $2.2
million in humanitarian assistance to Mexico
in the aftermath of the widespread flooding.
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