In case the river overflows

Two rural communities rehearsed what they would do if a flood to occur.

 

By Nancy Estrada Guerrero

 

    PIURA VALLEY, Peru – Two died, eight wounded, five houses destroyed, 988 acres of croplands erased, a blocked road, half-a-hundred animals disappeared – that was the toll of the flood simulacrum made by the community’s and district’s Civil Protection Committees in Santa Rosa de Curván Village, Tambogrande District, in mid-October 2008, a decade after that a heavy El Niño event slammed the whole Piura Region.

 

Santa Rosa de Curván is a village located at the southeast of Tambogrande City, Piura River’s Right Bank (San Francisco Creek). It is populated by 450 people, about 82 families, 61 houses. It don’t have services of running water or wreckage.

 

Due to its location and its soil’s characteristics, that are predominantly sandy and clayed, the people of this village is highly vulnerable especially in heavy rain seasons, when it is exposed to a flood warning because of the erosion that Piura River causes on the rims, affecting cropfields by the lack of river defenses.

 

Before this dangerous situation, the District’s Civile Protection Committee in coordination with the village’s Civil Protection Committee began progressive actions to organize for being prepared and facing possible disasters. One of those actions was a flood simulacrum what everyone in the village joined, testing the evacuation plan in case of a real situation would occur. The exercise was verified by the regional officers of Civil Protection.

 

The simulacrum looked for evaluating the response skills of the population, the self-protection actions they could active in case of disaster, and the evacuation procedures to previously identified safe zones, just in case.

 

Those civile protection committees empowerment actions were made in the frame of the project Local-wide preparation before linked risks to el Niño Phenomenom in Piura Basin, implemented by Centro Ideas, Oxfam GB, and the European Commission’s Humanitarian Help Office in the districts of Chulucanas and Tambogrande, middle part of Piura Basin.

 

     Removing Vicús

Handling basic stuff and helping children and wounded, the families of Vicús Village, Chulucanas District, evacuated to safe zones for protecting from the flood caused by the overflow of Piura River as consequence of heavy rains. The population joined massively the flood simulacrum made by the district’s and community’s Civil Protection Committees.

 

Vicús is located at the southeast of Chulucanas City, Piura River’s Left Bank. Its topography includes small hills and depressions forming Little streams where the rain water flows toward the river. The predominant soils are sand, clay, and few-cohesive sandy clay, making them much very vulnerable to the flood warning, especially the families living in the zones near the rims of river.

 

Like rehearsing how to respond in case of a real disaster, it was proposed alternatives like enlarging a rocky net, approximately 2310 feet longitude, and building breakwaters to divert the direction of main flow.

 

Original edition by Juan Félix Céspedes Cortés.