El Salvador Perspectives

Flooding in Olocuilta July 9 El Salvador Perspectives has been on vacation for the past month.  Here is a short summary of some of the major stories during that time. Flooding rains which impacted much of the country continue. Days of flooding rain began in mid-June over El Salvador and other parts of Central America as tropical weather systems impacted the region.  In El Salvador, at least 19 people died in floods, mudslides and other calamities due to the rain between June 14 and 19 with thousands forced to evacuate to government run shelters.  After that first week of flooding in mid-June, the country continued to be buffeted by more storms and rains.  Saturated soils meant that rainfall runoff quickly overran river banks or prompted trees to fall over.   The storms have continued in early July.   As of July 8, there were 8 government run shelters open housing 196 people.  A child drowned in flood waters over the weekend.  Beyond ...

Caserío El Icaco, Usulután It is still wet and muddy in El Salvador two days after the passage of Tropical Storm Julia along the length of this small country.        According to authorities , as of Wednesday night, the death toll stood at 10.  There are 102 open shelters providing refuge to 2837 people -- 947 families, 1580 adults and  1,257 children. The government said that 433 homes were damaged, 190 landslides occurred, and there were 294 locations where roads had been impassable for some portion of time. El Salvador is seeing widespread agricultural losses as small farmers lost crops in their flooded fields.  More than 17,0000 acres were affected, with reductions in rice and bean harvest being forecast, as well as damage to 5% of the coffee crop. Tuesday, the president's office revealed that Nayib Bukele had visited the site in Comasagua where 5 soldiers had perished in a mudslide. The president ordered the country to fly flags at half staff...

Tropical storm Julia passed along the length of El Salvador's Pacific Coast Sunday night into Monday, bringing with it torrential rains and flooding throughout the entire country.    As the storm approached on Sunday, red alerts were declared in every region of the small Central American country and president Nayib Bukele declared a national day of prayer. As of 12:30 PM local time on Monday, the death toll stood at 9.   The largest single tragedy involved the death of 5 soldiers when they were buried under a mudslide in Comasagua.  The soldiers had been part of an ongoing security operation which has cordoned off the municipality for more than a week. Two people died when a retaining wall collapsed in Morazan, another when a tree fell on a house and a motorcyclist died in an accident when a flooded current caused him to lose control. Rainfall totals through 7 a.m. on Monday Widespread flooding appeared first in the eastern part of the country, but as the st...

Almost daily rainstorms in El Salvador this September have produced a variety of damages across the country. Although the country has not been in the direct path of any hurricanes or tropical storms this season, weather patterns have brought heavy rains time and time again.   With soils now heavily saturated with moisture, flooding, landslides, and falling trees become an increasing hazard. Fourteen people have perished in different parts of the country during September as a result of weather events. As of this writing, 28 municipalities are under red alert and the rest of the country is under orange alert.  In the past 24 hours , just as an example, there were 11 landslides, 6 fallen trees blocking roads, 2 damaged homes, 1 damaged car, 3 collapsed walls, and 2 fatalities in rushing waters on different sides of the country.  176 Salvadorans from 49 families were living in 10 temporary shelters. Farms in different parts of the country have reported agricultural loss...

After  few weeks away from regular posts on El Salvador Perspectives, here is an update on the news out of El Salvador. Intense rains cause localized flooding Flooding  rains  passed through El Salvador this weekend as Hurricane Bonnie passed off the Pacific coast. At least  two people were killed  and 90 left in shelters, with school classes suspended nationwide on Monday. Videos circulated on social media of water flooding public hospitals including the country’s largest public hospital, Rosales. Although the government has had the funds on hand to replace or modernize Rosales since the beginning of the Bukele administration in 2019, no work has commenced on that project.   Sinkholes appeared in streets throughout the metropolitan area of San Salvador illustrating the ongoing infrastructure needs and the impact of urban development which has paid little attention to risk management.    The State of Exception continues The State of Exceptio...

 Today is the twentieth anniversary of the first of two devastating earthquakes which hit El Salvador in 2001.  That quake registered 7.6 on the Richter scale.  Exactly one month later, on February 13, another earthquake would cause more damage.  Between those two, the  damage was enormous : 1,259 deaths, 9,000 injuries and 1.6 million homeless victims in a country with a population of approximately six million. 150,000 homes were destroyed; 185,000 were damaged. Highways and roads were heavily damaged ). Eight hospitals and 113 of 361 health facilities were severely damaged representing 55 percent of the country’s capacity to deliver health services. Nearly 35 percent of all schools were affected (1,681 out of 4,820). This  BBC story  from January 13, 2001 describes the aftermath of that first earthquake ten years ago.   Worst hit was the neighborhood of Las Colinas, close to San Salvador, where a hillside gave way, burying the homes below it and...

For those living in El Salvador, it can feel like life is being lived in a series of apocalyptic moments, as plagues, natural and man-made, buffet the country.   1 )   The newest plague – voracious locusts .    Swarms of flying locusts, which can devastate fields of crops in a matter of hours, have arrived in Central America .   The hungry insects have already caused damage in the department of Peten in Guatemala and the International Organizationfor Regional Agricultural Health (OIRSA)   has warned El Salvador to be on alert. Grasshoppers in field in Peten, Guatemala President Nayib Bukele promptly announced his government is taking immediate measures to confront the threat.   The government circulating images of soldiers walking through corn fields searching for the insects.   The president flew with a squad of military helicopters to hold a press conference in a corn field in San Vicente department to descr...

Tropical storms Amanda and Cristobal produced widespread flooding and landslides in many parts of El Salvador.  They represent another major relief effort for a government already stretched thin by pandemic response and an economy which has been shuttered for almost three months. Similar to its dashboard for COVID-19, the government established an online site to tally the losses from the storms.   The site is located at  http://emergencia.marn.gob.sv/ . As of June 12, the official death toll from the storm stood at 30 persons with one person still missing. The government reports almost 30,000 families affected and some 5000 people currently in 144 shelters throughout the country.  392 schools suffered damage and thousands of acres of corn fields were flooded. From the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs : The storms come as El Salvador, home to 643,000 people in need according to the recent regional Humanitarian Needs Overview,...

On the last day of Nayib Bukele's first year in office, the first named storm of the Pacific hurricane season, Tropical Storm Amanda, brought floods to El Salvador.   Floods and landslides destroyed homes in many areas of the country. Bukele declared a national State of Emergency.  Late in the day on Sunday, early tallies of the damage included 14 fatalities, hundreds of homes flooded and at least 1200 in shelters. Particularly hard hit were some communities in San Salvador close to Arenal Monserrat, one of the waterways flowing into the Aceihuate River.   Images of the flooding in various areas: Por la zona de la colonia IVU. pic.twitter.com/bepWXlgNq5 — Carlos Cañas Dinarte 🇸🇻 (@ccdinarte2010) May 31, 2020 Mudslides closed the highways to the international airport and in the area of Los Chorros west of San Salvador.  Bridges were damaged in many areas. The Las Pavas water purification plant which pumps water from Rio Le...

Tropical Storm Amanda brought flooding rains to El Salvador overnight.   President Bukele has declared a State of Emergency.   The widespread flooding comes in the midst of the country dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic.   For updates through the day on Sunday, follow me on Twitter @TimMuth. Video Así está el río Acelhuate en la zona de La Málaga en este momento. Video Francisco Valle pic.twitter.com/irwQ8nKcfg — Diario El Mundo (@ElMundoSV) May 31, 2020

El Salvador is a country exposed to a myriad of possible natural disasters, from volcanoes to hurricanes, flooding, earthquakes, and tsunamis.   During November, numerous small earthquakes have been shaking the Central American nation. There were at least 160 earthquakes between November 12 and November 21 centered in the greater San Salvador area, of which 32 were strong enough to be felt by those of us living here.  Quakes ranged in size between 2.0 and 3.9 on the richter scale.  In addition, there have been regular quakes off the coastline of El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico which can be felt in San Salvador.  As I was typing this post, another quake shook the building where we live.  El Salvador's environment ministry, MARN, explained the recent quakes: The origin of this activity is attributed to the activation of the geological fault system in the AMSS and, it should be noted that, due to the seismic potential of these faults, the occurrenc...

A weather system related to the tropical weather patterns which produced hurricane Michael in the Caribbean has been generating heavy rains and flooding in El Salvador.  A "zone of intertropical convergence" has been over the country since Friday drawing moisture and storms off of the Pacific Ocean, according the the Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources .   The greatest impacts are being felt along the coast and in the eastern regions of the country. The government ordered all schools in the country closed on Monday and Tuesday as a precaution because of the danger of flooding and landslides.   At least four people have died, 14 are wounded and 700 people have sought protection in shelters. The Litoral highway which runs along El Salvador's Pacific coast was largely impassable because of mudslides and fallen trees. Meanwhile, El Salvador's presidential candidates and their parties made sure to show up in affected zones giving aid and looking ...

Houston is home to large numbers of Salvadoran migrants, both documented and undocumented. Recent news stories have explored the impact of the devastating hurricane on the immigrant  community in southeastern Texas.   A Pew research study estimated there were 191,000 Salvadoran born immigrants living in the greater Houston area as of 2014.   Tens of thousands would be undocumented, and already in significant fear under the Trump administration's anti-immigrant stance, even before last week's storm. USA Today took a look at the impact on the undocumented community in an article titled  Harvey wreaks havoc on undocumented immigrants : In the aftermath of Harvey, immigrant advocate groups have canvassed lower-income areas of southeast Houston to see how they're doing after one of the most damaging storms in U.S. history.  They've repeatedly heard from undocumented immigrants — as well as other low-wage workers in those neighborhoods — who were concerned a...

San Salvador volcano -- El Boquerón June 7 was the 100 year anniversary of the last great eruption of the San Salvador volcano , also known as "El Boquerón."  The eruption occurred on June 7, 1917 at 8:11 p.m.    It was preceded by two killer earthquakes at 6:55 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. which killed approximately 1050 people and left only 200 of the 9000 houses in the city intact. The 1917 eruption was a flank eruption of the volcano along one fissure. During this eruption, the crater lake inside the Boqueron evaporated and a cinder cone appeared within the crater, christened 'Boqueroncito'.   Lava would continue to flow for five months after the initial eruption. El Diario de Hoy has a collection of historic images of the 1917 eruption at this link .   There is a special exhibition regarding the eruption going on now at the Guzman national anthropology museum (MUNA). Boqueroncito

Thirty years ago today a massive earthquake struck San Salvador killing as many as 1,500 people.    The quake struck at ten minutes before noon on October 10, 1986  with a magnitude of 5.7.  The shallow quake caused considerable damage to El Salvador's capital city of San Salvador and surrounding areas, including neighboring Honduras and Guatemala. The temblor caused between 1,000 and 1,500 deaths, 10,000 injuries, and left 200,000 homeless.   The shallow quake located just 7 km from the center of the capital city caused the destruction of many buildings. San Salvador's Benjamin Bloom children's hospital, a marketplace, many restaurants, office buildings, and poor neighborhoods were significantly damaged or destroyed.   It was a massive tragedy which came in the midst of El Salvador's 12 year civil war. From the New York Times two days after the quake: The death toll from a strong earthquake two days ago has risen to 890 and some stricken areas ha...

Heavy rains over the past several days have caused scattered flooding and landslides in El Salvador.   At least two deaths have been reported.   The country remains under a yellow alert on a national level.  Public and private schools are suspending classes on Monday, and some universities are closed. According to Accuweather.com . the current weather pattern threatens much of Central America: While not all areas will experience heavy rainfall, the entire region is at risk for rainfall rates 50 mm (2 inch) or greater per hour at times resulting in an elevated risk for flash flooding.  Areas that experience the heaviest rainfall could see totals exceeding 100 mm (4 inches) by Monday. This amount of rainfall will also increase the threat for mudslides in addition to flash flooding.  Locations such as Guatemala City, Belize City and San Salvador are at risk for these dangerous conditions.

Three days ago I was with farmers in the eastern part of El Salvador on the slopes of the Chaparrastique volcano.   This year's drought has caused a loss of 80-100% of their corn and bean harvest.   They only hope now that the rains will come so there can be a second planting of the crops in August and three months of rain through the end of the rainy season in October.   They wait and pray.

For the second year in a row, drought is greatly reducing the production of corn, beans and other foodstuffs in El Salvador.   The map above shows the number of days without rain since June 14.  As the map shows, the most severe impact is in the east, where the rains have not been falling since June 14 in what is supposed to be the rainy invierno season.  Much of the first harvest has been lost , and farmers can only hope for rain to resume so that a second planting can mature before October. Detect language Afrikaans Albanian Arabic Armenian Azerbaijani Basque Belarusian Bengali Bosnian Bulgarian Cebuano Catalan Chichewa Chinese (Simplified) Chinese (Traditional) Croatian Czech Danish Dutch English Esperanto Estonian Filipino Finnish French Galician Georgian German Greek Gujarati Haitian Creole Hausa Hebrew Hindi Hmong Hungarian Icelandic Igbo Indonesian Irish Italian Japanese Javanese Kazakh Kannada Khmer Korean Lao Latin Latvian Lithuanian Macedoni...