It’s raining!

They said that 2012 would be a dry year… they said.

 

By Nelson Peñaherrera Castillo

 

PIURA CITY, Peru – Sánchez Cerro Vridge, February 24^th, 2012, 7:00 in the morning, 1400 cubic millimeters per second. The water is colorized by the violent improvisation instead of the unexpected. Piura River overload was the season attraction after months and months looking a flow like a creek-category.

 

The cement coat of Eguiguren Pier avoids the flow power to erode the banks of Piura and Castilla Cities, like it happened in 1983. The work was build after 45 miles to the west, El Niño Current caused extreme rains between January and June of that year.

 

The river put the people on alert in 1998, 2001, and 2005. Just in 1998, the power of water destroyed Bolognesi Bridge, the fourth from north to south, killing around 50 people. “I’m not never going to forget that number – 4414 cubic meters per second,” El Tiempo’s journalist Teo Zavala remembers. After that tragedy, every time that Piura River hid the bridges columns, the authorities forced the walkers to pass them handling a rope.

 

Despite the fear it caused in the population, former Piura’s Regional President Javier Atkins belief it was an overreacting frame: “We aren’t at 1998 levels yet,” he said the press. The Regional Emergency Operating Committee (COER as its initials in Spanish) suggested him at a first moment to declare the emergency situation, but the bureaucracy of the regional government was enjoying a long Valentines holiday and the demand left missing. Just on February 23rd, Mr Atkins announced he introduced the demand to National Institute of Civil Protection.

 

With a Jesus! on the lips

While the regional president dismissed the emergency, in fron of him, hectares of lans in Pozo Oscuro Town, Bernal District (about 30 miles to the south of the department’s capital city), were flooded. Along the course, the people was with the Jesus! on their lips.

 

Going up the river, in Chulucanas City (about 38 miles to the east of Piura City), Ñácara Bridge, that links that town to the rest of the department, should be closed temporarily on February 9^th after the water level was 5 feet below the carway. About 11 miles to the north, Sol-Sol Creek, Chulucanas District, killed a communitarian guardian that tried to transport many mates on a pick-up. While the rest saved, the corpse of the victim was disappeared for days.

 

Following up 11 miles to the north, in Malingas, Tambograndé District, San Francisco Creek became a huge river, isolating the community. As everytime it grows, truck tires and sskillful swimmers replace the inexistence of a demanded bridge.

 

At the nearby Chira Basin, Venados Creek blocked Lanconés-Alamor Road, that cconnects Sullana Province to Ecuadorian Loja Province. Poechos Reservoir got to store 330 million of 450 milion cubic meters  that it can contains today. In front of Sullana City, the Diverting Dam’s reservoir overflooded Marcavelica District croplands. In this point, the flow was 950 to 2000 cubic meters per second.

 

At the northeast, due to they locate in a low-pressure zone, the districts where illegal mining is done –Suyo, Sapillica, and Paimas— ,all in Ayabaca Province, had heavy rains. Former Piura Regional Government (RGoP)’s Natural Resources manager Cristina Portocarrero said on February 24^th it could have problems with acid water that could leak into the soil, but she needed a most detailed study.

 

At the south of them and where the mineral is pre-processed, Las LomasDistrict was declared in emergency and San Lorenzo Reservoir, the second largest of the department, was beginning to overflood by its eastern side.

 

And as much Eastern we went, the view was complicated wwith rivers and creeks that grew up and block it everything, like heavy traffic in Carrasquillo Bridge (Morropón District), or left isolating Huancabamba Province in Río Seco Bridge (Salitral District).

 

A cold La Niña

Nobody prepared for the rain. In fact, until December 2011, the National Service of Meteorology and Hydrology (Senamhi, as in Spanish)insisted it would be a dry year. According what it said, La Niña, that  causes a cooling of seawater in front of Piura Shores, would repeat the absence of rains like in 2011.

 

“The problem is the climate change is unpredictable,” observes Teo Zavala, also specialist in scientific journalism. A sudden temperature bring-down in November 2011 surprised the people – amid the transition of spring to summer, cities like Sullana was 52°F,or Catacaos that was 46°F. Those temperatures are usual at the highlands but not below 1650 feet above sea level.

 

Mango growers across the department, who were already alarmed by the late flowering of the fruit, feared a fall in the production. Beginning 2012, they didn’t have how to transport the few fruit they got. “Who could benefit were the rice growers because that crop requires permanent humidity,” agronomic engineer Luis Zevallos Muro opined to FACTORTIERRA.

 

However, the cereal was neither saved because the humidity over-saturated some lands and razed plantations at Upper Piura Valley. Mr Zevallos, who worked in Jayanca, Lambayequé, saw how the crops of corn and fruit lost.

 

February first week was full of rains across Peru, including a hailstorm in Cajamarca Valley. Why couldn’t Senamhi forecast the event? There was no official answer, but the cause was identified – an Amazonian humidity mass, what, as transported by the trade winds, that run here from east to west, carried and downloaded rain even in places where it’s not usual, like Lima City.

 

The mass could be caused in part by Atlantic Ocean that is ever warmer than the Pacific at the same latitude because it doesn’t have cold water currents like Humboldt’s. The rest was made by the Amazon Basin.

 

Without barriers

For Biologist Fidel Torres Guevara, who studied the effects of El Niño/La Niña Oscillation over Piura biodiversity, the event was not surprising because it rains over the region every austral summer. But, how does it explain that zones like Peruvian Southern also had rains?

 

“In normal conditions, el Niño allows that while the north is under rains, the south is dry because the warming of Pacific Ocean in front of Piura,” Torres explains. “But La Niña cools the water, what added to the coldness of Humboldt Current, it doesn’t cause enough evaporation to load the clouds – in consequence, there’s drought,” he adds.

 

Let’s remember while El Niño/La Niña moves from north to south in front of South America, Humboldt’s goes in reverse. The collision happens in front of Colán District, in normal conditions. Without a thermal barrier that counter it, Amazonian humidity was able to overcome 19,800 feet of the Andean Range and its considerable width in Central and Southern Peru.

 

At Northern, the story was different en even normal. The range is not too much wide and high so the Amazonian Transfer is efficient. Let’s remember that Piura’s highest point is just 12,870 feet (in Huancabamba Province), about 40% less than in the rest of the mountains at the north as well as at the south. “Those rains are normal, the problem is nobody has realized on the indicators those already gave signs it approached,” Torres sustained.

 

Ask the tree

Usually, weather forecasts are made by cross-checking many mathematical variables combined with information provided by meteorological satellites. The calculation may be so precise that come to set the exact geographic point where a climatologic event could happen, so taking caution and saving lives is relatively easy.

 

In 2005, when Hurricane Katrina swept the U.S. southeastern coast, scientists warned the risk in New Orleans, LA, where the cyclone entered through. They forecasted the hurricane rains plus the winds altered the sea level, increased Mississippi River, and flooded the city. The event happened with hundreds of feet by error. That federal authorities did not take caution is another story.

 

“The difference between them and Peru is millions of dollars invested in researching every year,” Fidel Torres explains. From Peruvian growth domestic product, 2% goes to education and just a decime part of that proportion goes to research. “That’s why here the máximum range of a forecast is one week, and not sure it happens,” the scientist says.

 

In 2012, he was making a study which the weather forecast could incorporate variables not depending on the technology but the popular wisdom: “The countryside people don’t check out the satellite to know if it’s going to rain or it isn’t – they watch the behavior of some animal and vegetal species, and that allows them to know what weather expects even three months before,” he explained.

 

Although he already had identified half-a-dozen of those variables, the model was not scientifically conclusive because it should adapt to mathematical equations, and he was looking for a specialist in the subject. Former Peru’s President Ollanta Humala promised to increase funs for scientific investigation, passing through the creation of an ad-hoc ministry. It was not accomplished.

 

The universities receiving money from a canon for generating science address it to payrolls, buildings, or they don’t expend it at all. “The problem is Peru prefers to invest in extracting minerals but not in knowledge,” Torres complains.

 

Meanwhile, it rained. “The people only remain to wait for those rains to happen, and waiting for the next ones,” Luis Zevallos observed. COER’s Víctor Labán advised the rains were going to continue in March based upon Senamhi reports, and a technical opinion depends on it to declare the emergency.

 

An advisor to Piura’s Regional President said to FACTORTIERRA that it was indeed evaluating the situation. The people didn’t feel so and just got to attend to surrealistic shows, like seeing the ficle Piura River to play carving the patience of human works while willows and carobs, before dancing, were up to be ktaken out from their roots.

 

With reports of Radio Cutivalú in Piura, Liliana Alzamora in Tambograndé, and Roberto Saavedra in Chulucanas. © 2012 Asociación Civil Factor Tierra. All Rights Reserved. The photographs in Tambograndé featured on this entry are Eder Alzamora.