From the Sula Valley: What the frontline teaches us about disaster preparedness
The first project visit of the Pre-Evacuation Platform for Latin America and the Caribbean – a new project GNDR is working on with IOM and GNDR member, Terram Pacis, with funding from Innovation Norway – took place in Honduras this month. The platform will strengthen countries’ disaster preparedness across the region through evidence and data. While its outlook is regional, the project begins in the Northern Triangle – Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala – and this first visit to Honduras marked the starting point.
The purpose of the visit was to understand, in the words of those who live and work in risk management every day – national authorities, local governments and civil society – the challenges, lessons learned and good practices in disaster preparedness. Together with IOM, the delegation visited three municipalities in the north of the country: San Pedro Sula, Choloma and Tela, all highly vulnerable to hydrometeorological events.
Lessons from the Sula Valley’s history
This is no ordinary area. The Sula Valley carries the memory of Hurricane Mitch in 1998, which left close to 7,000 people dead in Honduras and reshaped the way the country thinks about risk; and, more recently, tropical storms Eta and Iota, in November 2020, which flooded much of the valley again within just a few days. Hearing first-hand how these communities have lived with the destructive effects of water, again and again, gives a different weight to any data point or indicator.
Who is sustaining preparedness on the ground
On the ground, the team learned about the work of COPECO, the Honduran institution responsible for risk management. It also spoke with the CODEM, the municipal emergency committees that coordinate local response, as well as with the Red Cross, community leaders, civil society organisations, the police and firefighters: a web of actors that, often working with limited resources, sustains preparedness from the ground up. The visit also included a dialogue with the Regional Network for Risk Management in Central America (CRGR), whose experience and regional perspective are a valuable reference for guiding the platform’s work.
GNDR members that know the territory like no one else also took part: ASONOG, CASM, OCDIH, ODECO and ASIDE. It is also worth highlighting the role of the Choloma Chamber of Commerce, which has become a key actor in emergency response in the municipality: a concrete example of how the private sector can – and should – play an active role in risk management.
Progress made, and what the Pre-Evacuation Platform still needs to address
What does this visit leave us with? Honduras faces enormous challenges across the disaster risk management cycle, but it has also made progress: monitoring and early warning systems, hazard mapping, inter-institutional coordination, community education on evacuation, and infrastructure works for community resilience. Much remains to be done, especially in reaching the most vulnerable communities: safe and dignified evacuation spaces, monitoring that genuinely involves communities in data collection, and urban planning that treats these largely predictable threats seriously.
Local knowledge and the role of the private sector
And there is something risk management can never lose sight of: it is not only a technical, technological or infrastructure issue. At its core are human rights – the economic, social, cultural and environmental rights – of the most vulnerable people, who are the first to lose out when the water rises. Nor can risk management in Central America be discussed as an isolated issue: it is intertwined with migration, political violence against social leaders, and violence linked to gangs and organised crime. All of this is part of the same conversation.
Listening directly to those on the front lines is what will allow the platform’s actions to respond to the real needs of the most vulnerable communities – and, ultimately, to help save lives.