That’s why an Oxfam America emergency response launched in La Pelota last October sought not only to meet people’s immediate needs, but to help them mitigate the risks of their community for the future.
When it rains hard, La Pelota is one of the first communities in the area to flood, in part because a vigorously growing plant called la ninfa clogs the local waterways. The plant is a sign of another problem people face: poor infrastructure for sanitation. Most families rely on pit latrines whose contaminants feed the growth of la ninfa.
In October, Tropical Depression 12-E hit. It rained for almost two weeks straight. On one side of La Pelota the lake overflowed, and on the other side its natural drain spilled its banks.
“It began to rain quite a lot. Little by little, the lake drained, but then the water level rose as it continued to rain,” said Juan Francisco Flores, a 32-year-old community member. “The lake doesn’t flow fast enough through the channel. The water backs up and that’s what floods the community… The stream was flooding on one side and the lake on the other. We were isolated.”
The response from the community to the flooding was well planned and evacuation was timely, due to preparedness work that had been done by Oxfam partner Fundación Maquilishuat (FUMA), in recent years. However, damage to crops was severe.
Together with FUMA and the World Food Programme, Oxfam America launched a food-for-work initiative that not only helped families in La Pelota survive in the first months after the emergency, but reduced the risk they would face in the future. FUMA and citizens of La Pelota decided to clean out the channel to allow the water to flow more easily and prevent flooding. Oxfam provided material to do the work, FUMA provided monitoring and technical assistance, and the families carried out the work.
The project provided people with 100 pounds of corn, 33 pounds of rice, 20 pounds of beans, and a gallon of cooking oil, in exchange for 80 hours of work a month.
“The food-for-work project has been well received. It was very effective to implement this project at this time of year, when people usually don’t have work,” says Sandra Quinteros of FUMA. “There’s been a selection process for the FFW program, with several criteria—that they lost at least 50 percent of their production; that they live on less than two dollars a day; that they have many children or older adults to care for; that they are day laborers; and that they are willing to work.”
The food-for-work project has been implemented in 99 poor communities like La Pelota, in 15 municipalities throughout El Salvador. A total of 3,800 families earned a three-month supply of corn, beans, rice, and oil for a family of five, enabling them to recover from their losses and now live in better prepared communities.
]]>For days, a small team of local aid providers has been delivering essentials like tanks of clean water, sanitation and hygiene supplies, and cooking equipment to the shelters, expanding and complementing the National Civil Protection System. Their initial action was so swift that by the time the president declared a national state of emergency, thousands of displaced people were already benefiting from their work.
The aid workers are members of Salvadoran organizations, groups that are willing to put all their other work on hold when disaster strikes. And they are not just foot soldiers—they are experts, able to survey a shelter in the midst of an emergency and within hours get key relief materials delivered and water tanks installed that meet international standards for quality.
“There is this core of ten or fifteen people on the team who are working day and night,” says Karina Copen, Oxfam’s humanitarian program officer in El Salvador. “They’re so dedicated."
The core team on the ground is never entirely alone. All across the country, they are supported by community leaders who have been trained in the basics of caring for the public health needs of their people during emergencies. And they are backed by Oxfam.
For the past four years, Oxfam has led an effort to build the capacity of local Salvadoran communities, municipalities, and aid groups for handling emergencies like earthquakes and floods. Multi-day seminars and hands-on disaster simulations have helped transform the desire to help into hard-core expertise.
“In some ways, it would be easier to bring in a team of Oxfam specialists to do the work in emergencies,” says Copen. “But it wouldn’t be nearly as effective.”
“In a disaster, communities are the first responders,” she explains. “Before local or international aid agencies or government officials arrive, the affected communities need to make decisions and act.” So, training community leaders in the basics of public health—organizing shelters, maintaining sanitary conditions, and making sure people are drinking clean water—has been a top priority.
Training a core team of water and sanitation specialists has been even more labor-intensive, but everyone has benefited.
“In this emergency, team members have been able to come up with accurate technical assessments and then implement the response,” she says.
Confident in the team’s ability to handle the work on the ground, Copen and colleague Enrique García, Oxfam’s regional humanitarian coordinator, are able to focus on coordination.
The result: an effective and smooth-running disaster response that draws energy from its own success. “The people we’ve trained are not sitting around waiting for someone to tell them what to do,” says Copen. “They know how to help their communities, and they are stoked.”
Now that the rains have eased and the sun has appeared, everyone in the shelters is eager to go home.
But the emergency doesn’t stop here. In the region known as the Bajo Lempa, the floods struck harder than anyone had seen in many years. Towns and villages are still deep in muck, their wells contaminated and their latrines flooded.
Now, Oxfam and the team are turning their attention to making home communities safe. The most pressing need, says Copen, is potable water.
There’s more to face: food shortages may threaten the recovery. Forty percent of the corn crop and 77 percent of the bean harvest have been lost to the floods, and prices are shooting up already. Oxfam is exploring ways to address the most urgent needs.
After days of ceaseless work, Copen sounds tired but hopeful.
“I’m always moved by the commitment of our partners, but this time I was also moved by the communities. They’re organizing themselves. They haven’t slept. They’re tending to each other’s needs. And they’re going back to their homes to start again.”
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]]>“The water rose above the windows. That was around one or two o’clock in the morning. It rose very quickly. I left my house swimming through the window and we went to the house of a neighbor who has a wide wall. We all climbed onto that wall, even some dogs. There we stayed until five or six o’clock, when the rain began to stop. Then, with the light of day, we all helped each other to get out. By then, the bridge had already collapsed and they had to get us to the other side of the river with a rope, one by one. On the other side, a pick-up truck waited for us, ready to bring us here, to the shelter.”
Mayra’s little house of cement blocks remained intact, but she lost all of her belongings. In the mud and rubbish, she found a picture of her two children, 7 and 8 years old. At the sight of it, Mayra burst in tears. The loss of these irreplaceable things is what most hurts.
“We were the last ones in the neighborhood to get out. But not via the streets. We had to go through the houses of other people. We didn’t know what to do! My brother came and we put my mother in a big bucket to get her out. I walked behind them, hanging on to the ropes they provided us with. And when the car went over the bridge, it came down.”
“Eight months ago, my husband died and I was very lonely. So, I came here (El Achiotal), where my sisters live. But after a while I decided to go back, because my sisters gave me everything and I felt like I had to earn my own living. And after only two weeks of being back in my own village, this happened. I stayed in my house. When the water came up to here (chest high), I climbed into my hammock, which I had tied up as high as I could. But when I saw that the water rose even more, I decided to get out. I reached for a chair. I almost fell! Many had gone to the school, but I decided to go back to my sisters. I thought that maybe the water hadn’t entered there. I left on Sunday morning and when I got here, I saw that they were also evacuating people. It’s pure luck that I found my sisters! And now, where they are, I’ll be. Because I have nowhere to go. I’m all alone, without my husband, without my home, without my house.”
“We had gone to dig up turtle eggs. We were on our way back and we saw the water coming. First a little bit, and then it rose to our knees. We were seven all together, riding our bikes. When the water rose up to our chests, we had to throw our bikes on our shoulders. After one hour we could barely go on, our legs hurt too much! The bike is the only thing that I could save; I left it in a house where almost no water entered. But apart from that, I’ve lost everything, my little shack, the metal sheets, everything is gone. Just a pool of muddy water is left behind.”
“I called 911 and they said ‘Have patience. We’ll get there.’ In the mean time, we climbed onto a beam. The water was already chest high. At five o’clock a brother from the church came and he took one of my boys. I carried the other one. The water was already above their heads. We can’t live here anymore. The mud came above the windows, everything is destroyed. And we have no income. Normally we live from working in the sugar cane fields, but now, the harvest is ruined too.”
]]>While the team was at the mayor’s office, news arrived that two more bodies had been found—one of them, a 5-year old girl--which brought the number of dead to 16. Ten people remain missing.
“Seeing the devastation to the town caused by the enormous boulders, rivers of mud, and rubble that swept through I was surprised—and grateful—that the human cost wasn’t higher,” said one team member.
Living through the disaster was clearly a nightmare—the story of Emerita Rivas, 26, made that clear. The Oxfam team met her that day at the mayor’s office where she had been working for just two months when the disaster struck. Smiling and intelligent, she seemed already to be a crucial part of the local administration. She was meeting delegations, coordinating with the mayor and the secretary, and keeping tabs on where to send humanitarian aid.
Here is her account of the early morning hours of November 8 when the landslide hit:
“It was one in the morning and we heard a noise that sounded like heavy machinery that was getting close to us. But it was the mud and the rocks that were coming. We left quickly to knock on doors so that people would leave. Soon, we also heard the whistles, the sign that everyone had to get out. Ever since the earthquakes in 2001, people have been organized into eight sectors, and every sector has a leader.
“At around two in the morning, police cars and private cars started to arrive in order to bring people to the shelters, but there wasn’t anything there—the mats didn’t come until Monday. Thank God, the area where we live was not affected and we could help out during the emergency. We spent all day Sunday evacuating people. There were many injured people. People had to go up on the roofs or hang onto the walls, and those walls have broken glass in order to prevent robberies.
“Even though our neighborhood wasn’t affected, I am also sleeping in the shelter, because I am still afraid. Many people have suffered nervous breakdowns. One neighborhood and the town center ended up completely destroyed and the authorities have said that it’s not a good idea to rebuild the town.”
]]>Torrential rains the previous weekend triggered the landslide and spread devastation across El Salvador. The disaster has left 184 people dead, and in Verapaz alone, more than 800 people have sought refuge in shelters.
Oxfam has been responding to the disaster by providing hygiene kits, water tanks, stoves, and kitchen utensils. The organization is now helping about 4,200 people and assessing the damage to determine how best to provide support as communities work to recover.
]]>Cars lie twisted and half-buried in the mud.
White-capped waves appear in the torrent of water that sweeps past a gas station.
The scenes from the floods and landslides that struck El Salvador last weekend reflect a storm of almost unbelievable intensity.
“In San Vincente, more than a foot of rain fell in just four hours,” says Carolina Castrillo, regional director for Oxfam America.
These have been the deadliest rains since Central America’s storm of the century—Hurricane Mitch—struck El Salvador in 1998. More than 200 people are dead or missing, more than 2,000 houses have been damaged or destroyed, and crops that the rural population depends on for food have been obliterated.
“Where are we going to live, now that we have lost everything?” asked a woman in Verapaz, a town nearly destroyed by a landslide. “Where are we going to plant, what is going to happen to our lives?”
In the wake of Hurricane Mitch, many Salvadoran communities have joined forces with aid providers to reduce the deadly outcomes of violent storms and earthquakes. Over the past four years, Oxfam has supported local organizations to help form and train committees within the villages to operate early warning systems, develop evacuation plans, and administer first aid. This week, more than 70 Oxfam-supported community-protection committees were mobilized to help survivors reach the safety of shelters.
“Although this week’s storm was destructive, the partnership between aid providers and communities has made people less vulnerable than they were eleven years ago,” says Castrillo.
“Hurricanes, earthquakes, and landslides are all hazards in El Salvador, but the risks they pose to communities can be reduced,” she says. “That’s what we’re aiming for."
In the meantime, the needs on the ground are real and urgent, as survivors struggle to recover. Among their countless losses is peace of mind, as they live and relive the disaster. Days after the landslide, a boy from Verapaz describes his gripping fear: “I can’t speak because I feel my heart beating.”
Oxfam has built a warehouse stocked with emergency provisions in a disaster-prone area of El Salvador. In the November flood emergency, we were able to rush food, clean water, shelter materials, mattresses, first aid kits, and other essentials to shelters for displaced people, while making plans to help ensure longer-term food security when people return to their homes.
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]]>The heavy rains that pummeled El Salvador on November 7 triggered deadly floods and landslides that have buried homes, collapsed bridges, and destroyed crops. By November 9, 130 people had died—many in a single devastating landslide—and more than 13,000 had fled to emergency shelters.
But it could have been worse. Oxfam and our local partners began helping communities prepare for this emergency long before it ever came to pass. Working in areas that are vulnerable to floods, landslides, and other hazards, our partners have helped villages form community-protection committees that they then provided with equipment and trainings in first aid, early-warning systems, shelter management, and evacuation planning. When the downpour began to signal danger, 71 Oxfam-supported community-protection committees swung into action and helped guide their people to safety.
Once in the shelter of schools and community buildings, many felt the impact of another Oxfam preparedness measure: a nearby warehouse stocked with essentials. Events like hurricanes and earthquakes that put communities at risk often damage and destroy the roads and bridges that connect them with outside help. The Oxfam warehouse, which is located in a hazardous region of the country, helped ensure that we could move emergency equipment to the shelters quickly and safely.
So when disaster struck, Oxfam aid reached three shelters in the hard-hit areas of Zacatecoluca, Melara, and Puerto La Libertad within hours of the arrival of displaced families. Industrial kitchen equipment and utensils and tanks of clean water helped ensure that there was food to eat and water to drink, and mattresses provided a measure of comfort.
Oxfam also quickly purchased materials for distribution, so other shelters in Zacatecoluca and San Salvador soon received deliveries of first aid kits, hygiene materials, and food, as well as pickaxes, wheelbarrows, and shovels to facilitate the clean-up effort around shelters.
Meanwhile, teams of staff and partners were fanning out across the affected areas to determine how best to meet the longer-term needs of those who have suffered the loss of homes and the means to make a living.
“Disaster preparedness can save lives and help alleviate suffering and economic losses,” says Oxfam America humanitarian response director Michael Delaney. “We hope our supporters will help us sustain and expand this program so we can continue to help communities and partners plan ahead.”
Read more about Oxfam’s preparedness work in El Salvador.
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]]>On January 13, 2001, a powerful earthquake shook El Salvador. In San José Costa Rica, houses collapsed, many residents suffered broken bones, and a four-year-old girl was killed. The main road was destroyed, so for a time the community was cut off from outside help.
In the aftermath of the 2001 earthquake, Oxfam teamed up with local partner REDES with the goal of helping Costa Rica and many other Salvadoran communities prevent future earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural events from becoming full-scale disasters.
The REDES program in Costa Rica is grounded in a community emergency committee whose members have taken charge of evacuation, communications, shelter, first aid, and other key tasks. After mapping out the risks and resources of the village, REDES and the committee developed an emergency-response plan designed to ensure that everyone—including those living in hazardous locations and people with limited mobility—could reach safety in the early hours of an emergency. A two-way radio was installed, providing the community with access to the REDES base, which is staffed 24 hours a day to handle emergency communications. REDES trained community members in first aid and other skills that are essential for first responders, and the community held drills to simulate emergencies.
In October of 2005, Hurricane Stan pounded El Salvador and put Costa Rica's preparations to the test. High winds, heavy rains, landslides, and washed-out roads that isolated the village all portended tragedy, yet the town suffered no deaths or serious injuries. At a gathering of the community's emergency committee and Oxfam and REDES staff, we heard about what happened from the people who lived through it.
As quickly as possible after the hurricane struck, Claudia Dalila Sánchez, who headed up the evacuation committee, led her team on a tour of the community. They evacuated people trapped by landslides and caught in other precarious situations, and they monitored the rising waters of Lago de Ilopango. "When the earthquake happened, we didn't know enough," she said. "For Stan, we had better information about how to take people out of danger."
"In both the 2001 earthquake and Hurricane Stan, the roads were destroyed so no vehicles could come in," explained Miguel Martínez, San José Costa Rica's emergency committee coordinator. "But the difference with Stan was that we were organized. After the earthquake, people didn't have the consciousness to help each other, but after Stan, the community was united. We scheduled turns so people could work on the road, and in a short time, we were able to clear it."
Carmen Sosa is a shy woman who waited until all seven of the committee leaders had spoken before telling her story. "During the earthquake, we didn't know what to do. My house fell. My husband was hurt by a roof tile that fell on his head. And since I didn't know what to do, I just cried. I saw all my things destroyed and thought, 'This is it. I don't have anything left.' But since REDES has given us training, we now know what we can do in these cases."
Carmen concluded with a self-assured smile that left us feeling that something about this program—either the new skills she's learned or the knowledge that she no longer has to face emergencies alone—has added a measure of confidence to her life.
Oxfam's partners work in many communities around the country, helping them take charge effectively at times of emergency. But our program goes far beyond teaching the nuts and bolts of emergency response: one of our partners co-authored a law that has created a role for communities in El Salvador's national system of disaster preparedness and response, and which requires for the first time that disaster preparedness be incorporated into development planning.
"We are working to help impoverished communities gain both the skills and the voice in the political process that they need to prevent future emergencies from becoming disasters," says Michael Delaney, Oxfam America's Director of Humanitarian Response. "So far, signs point to success."
Working through REDES and other partners, Oxfam America's disaster risk reduction programs in El Salvador are now reaching an estimated 200,000 people.
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