Storms and Eruptions in Central America

If you have been watching the news you have surely noticed that there has been two natural disasters in Central America in this past week – the eruption of volcano Pacaya and the heavy rains of an early storm.

Tropical storm Agatha has caused tremendous flooding in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras with many bridges being wiped out causing a breakdown in the supply of food to many of the affected areas. There has also been some loss of life in each of countries where we work. Thankfully the locations where our partners work were not the hardest hit so they will be able to assist the people in the areas that were.

In Honduras most of the seeds from the new crop were washed away.

In Guatemala, Agatha has caused flooding and loss of homes, crops and stores. The area of Agua Escondita was the hardest hit in our program area and the staff from Mujeres en Accion have been out distributing food and water in the area. You can see from the photo below that we are not just talking about simple crop damage here. Slides like this werecommon. Thankfully no one was killed in this slide.

We are still waiting for our partners to assess the situation to determine what World Accord’s response will be. We will keep readers up to date.

Also in Guatemala, Pacaya blew her stack and spewed hundreds of thousands of tons of ash and rock and lava into the air. This is ordinarily an active but peaceful volcano. Just 20 months ago I was toasting marshmallows on the lava flow on Pacaya. To see her erupt like this is another story altogether, Check out this YouTube video:

Reports say three people were killed by the falling rock. Areas of Guatemala City were covered with up to three inches of ash and the airport had to be closed.