Responding to the devastation wrought by Hurricane Ida, government agencies and private enterprises in El Salvador are trying to re-establish communications, utilities, and roads damaged by landslides and flooding in the Central American nation. Some 37 villages and towns in El Salvador remain isolated by rockslides and debris left behind by the hurricane, which killed some 140 people. Dozens of Salvadorans remain unaccounted for as searchers look through rubble and devastated homes. Hurricane Ida reached hurricane force on November 7 and was a Category 2 storm by November 8. After hitting Central America and the Yucatan coast of Mexico it headed north towards the U.S. and its Gulf of Mexico oil facilities.
According to an emergency services official in El Salvador on November 10, the situation remains serious as rescue teams and volunteers seek to remove tons of mud, boulders, and rubble. Local press is reporting that some 500 people may still be trapped beneath the debris. The entire province of La Paz, along the country’s Pacific coast, is affected. Three days of rain and wind caused rivers to crest and then damage or destroy 18 bridges, thereby complicating movement on the ground. Private companies are providing earthmoving equipment voluntarily in response to the disaster, since the national government has no such heavy equipment.
Salvadoran authorities are attending to the more than 13,000 who are currently in temporary shelters in the provinces of San Salvador, La Libertad, Cuscatlán, San Vicente, La Paz, Cabañas and Usulután. The director of civil defense, Jorge Melendez – a former communist guerrilla combatant – said that his agency is working intensely to respond to the shelters’ needs and undertake an assessment of the situation. Homeless people are filling local schools, community centers, and churches as fears of an epidemic emerge. The dozens of bodies of the dead that are feared to be beneath the debris are feared are likely causes of contagion.
The Venezuelan government sent a team of experts on November 9 and will do a damage survey in Verapaz, a village some 50 miles east of the capital city, which is one of the areas most damaged by the rain. Technicians from neighboring Central American nations are also on the scene doing assessments. There is a report that a town in San Vicente province, which in a recent census registered 600 inhabitants, only 100 have survived the storm. The national legislature has declared three days of official mourning.
The storm made landfall in Louisiana on November 10.
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