Stormy Weather!

You might have heard that it´s been raining a lot in Guatemala. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-15283869) That´s true. It´s been raining almost continually for a day or two - and on and off for the previous 2 weeks. Really the rainy season should have finished about a month ago, but it keeps on. When you live in a well built house, it´s easy to think that it´s just rain, but the reality is that this can have a huge affect on people. In rural areas, whole villages can be washed away by a landslide. In Guatemala, where the infrastructure hasn´t fully recovered from Tropical Storm Agatha last June (2010), or even from Hurricane Stan, a few years previously, storms or even the ´tropical depression´ that we´re experiencing at the moment, has far reaching affects on people, communities and the economy. As the depression has now been downgraded to a ´low pressure´, the officials begin the counting.....15 dead.... 3588 affected..... 931 in temporary shelters..... it'll be a while before they work out the financial implications, but many of the agricultural regions, which supply the country with staples have been severely affected too.
It´s interested, that just yesterday I was in the Ezra Centre office, working on a project for them about climate change and the environment. I learned that Guatemala ranks in the top five countries in the world most affected by floods, hurricanes and earthquakes, with 40.8 percent of the population exposed to five or more threats simultaneously. And that doesn´t just affect rural areas. With so much uncertainty and risk involved in agriculture, there is a sustained internal migration to the cities, where satellite communities grow up too quickly for local authorities to provide basic services and ensure that homes are built safely and away from risk areas. This reality is echoed on the news reports at the moment, as several metropolitan areas are badly affected as well.
So we keep on counting, and praying .... more rain forecasted for the weekend.