HONDURAS:
Small Improvements in
Hurricane Preparedness
By Thelma Mejía
TEGUCIGALPA, (IPS/IFEJ)
- With the 2007
hurricane season well
underway, Honduras shows
improved reaction
capacity, but the
country still lacks
policies to reduce its
vulnerability to natural
disasters, such as
preventing people from
building in flood plains
like those devastated
nine years ago by
Hurricane Mitch, say
experts.
In Tegucigalpa alone,
one of the areas must
vulnerable to flooding,
78 million dollars are
needed to improve
infrastructure in areas
at risk, said Mayor
Ricardo Álvarez in an
interview for this
report.
The Choluteca River,
which crosses
Tegucigalpa, needs to be
dredged so that it
returns to its original
course. That would cost
an estimated 4.2 million
dollars. But furthermore
many people have
returned to live along
the riverbanks due to
the lack of contingency
plans, nationally and in
the country's 298
municipalities, said the
mayor.
There has been some
progress, however.
Hurricane Felix, which
made landfall in
Honduras on Sep. 5,
causing intense rains
and flooding along some
rivers, demonstrated the
coordination capacity of
state and local agencies
under the leadership of
the Permanent Commission
on Contingencies (COPECO),
agree several experts.
"This was not the case
before, not when Mitch
happened. There used to
be distrust among the
institutions and the
data were diffuse,
confusing. Now we see a
more coordinated team,
from local governments
and at the central
level, which allowed a
broad process of early
warning for the
citizens," said Nabil
Kawas, meteorologist and
professor at the public
Autonomous National
University of Honduras.
The National
Meteorological Service
has acquired more
experience, he said.
Following training in
2005, it can now predict
more effectively the
amount of rainfall in
specific areas, which
allows monitoring of
potable water supplies
and hydroelectric dams,
and to discharge water
if levels are too high,
he explained.
"People have learned to
protect themselves and
to be aware. There were
no deaths (from
Hurricane Felix, in
Honduras), and that
shows we are better off
now then when we had to
face the impacts of
Hurricane Mitch," Kawas
said.
When Mitch thrashed
Central America in
October 1998, some 7,000
people died in Honduras
and more than 3,000 in
Nicaragua. As a result
of the disaster, both
countries fell back an
estimated 20 years in
terms of infrastructure
and development.
Now the local emergency
committees in
Tegucigalpa operate with
such precision that "it
was known, for example,
which general store was
in a higher risk zone
than the others, and the
effort to personally
convince people to
evacuate had positive
results," said Mayor
Álvarez.
In the neighbourhoods
where the city
government was not able
to clean out the sewage
drains to prevent
flooding, the residents
organised to do it
themselves.
President Manuel Zelaya
pointed to the
evacuation of 25,000
people in less than a
day as another success.
The early warning system
made evacuation possible
in four of the country's
18 departments
(provinces), mostly in
the jungle region of
Mosquitia, on the
Atlantic coast and the
areas along the
Nicaraguan border hit by
Felix, like Puerto
Cabezas and Cabo de
Gracias a Dios.
The Mosquitia region,
known also as the
Mosquito Coast, a vast
swath shared by Honduras
and Nicaragua, and the
forest-covered mountains
of the two countries
contributed to the
weakening of Felix,
which made landfall on
Sep. 4 as a maximum
strength hurricane, so
it did not cause severe
damages in Honduras,
according to the experts
consulted for this
report.
The hurricane hit one of
the most densely
forested zones of
Central America and "we
were saved by a stroke
of luck, because if that
hurricane had hit
somewhere else, it
would've destroyed us,"
commented biologist and
university professor
Mirna Marín.
Though Hondurans were
spared their lives, in
Nicaragua some 40 people
died, 120 disappeared,
and 50,000 were left
homeless by Felix.
In Marín's opinion,
Honduras today is just
as vulnerable as it was
after Mitch hit almost a
decade ago. "People
returned to live near
the rivers and in flood
zones, and there is no
government policy to
prevent those actions,"
she said.
"Deforestation of
watersheds and mountains
continues, without
stopping to think about
their importance in
threatening situations
like the one we just
faced," she said.
Forests play an
important role in the
ability of soil to
absorb rain.
The former COPECO
commissioner Juan Carlos
Elvir believes Honduras
is lacking land
regulation and budget
supports for the
emergency and prevention
institutions.
"Although we have
improved a great deal,
management needs to go
deeper and there needs
to be more aggressive
citizen participation,"
he said.
"We don't yet have a
culture for preventing a
social behaviour of
panic like what we
experienced these days
in the long lines at the
shops, supermarkets,
banks and gas stations,"
said Elvir.
(*This story is part of
a series of features on
sustainable development
by IPS-Inter Press
Service and IFEJ-International
Federation of
Environmental
Journalists.) |
