How can Peru prepare to withstand more devastating floods and landslides?

For most Peruvians, this year’s floods have been the worst in living memory. Ten times the usual amount of rain has fallen on Peru’s coast, swelling rivers which caused widespread flooding, and triggering huge landslides which tore through shanty towns.

More than 100 people have died, nearly 158,000 are displaced and 210,000 homes are damaged, according to Peru’s emergency operations centre. The country’s infrastructure took a big hit: 260 bridges collapsed and nearly 3,000km of roads are unusable, cutting off hundreds of villages and towns.

Peru’s rainy season falls broadly in the first quarter of every year. It is also known as “landslide season”, but few can remember huaycos, as they are known in the local Quechua language, of such intensity and scale. As Peru’s weather service reported record rains in the north of the country in March, usually dry rivers turned into raging torrents – and never have so many people lived in their path.

The country is ill-prepared for seasonal floods at the best of times, let alone those of such brutality that have laid bare Peru’s patchy infrastructure, its disorderly and informal growth, and its often non-existent urban planning.

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