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I
N
1998 H
URRICANE
M
ITCH
, one of the deadliest Atlantic storms
in history, devastated much of Central America. Mitch caused
catastrophic flooding and landslides – ecosystems, infrastruc-
ture and watersheds were devastated. Mitch’s devastation included:
• 6,000 deaths; 1.5 million people affected
• 35,000 houses were destroyed and 50,000 were badly
damaged leaving 441,150 people homeless
• 70 per cent loss of GDP (USD5 billion)
• More than 70 per cent of roads damaged, 63 bridges
destroyed.
Alongside the worst of its effects, Mitch revealed the real vulner-
ability of local communities to disaster. In the void left in the
wake of its damage, important questions emerged. Why had
communities not been more prepared and organized to respond
to the disaster, and how could Mitch have destroyed decades of
development investment in a matter of hours? Unavoidable ques-
tions were:
• How could disaster preparedness and mitigation have been
better integrated into development work to reduce the toll
Mitch took on communities, their environments and
livelihoods?
• What could communities have done themselves to be more
resilient before Mitch happened?
These questions gave birth to a unique initiative that has
sparked a change process in Latin America. The questions and
their programmatic response – including the Central American
Mitigation Initiative (CAMI) and one of its successors, the
Community Emergency Response/Disaster Mitigation (CERDM)
project – catalysed a process that has extended beyond the
scope of traditional disaster-related fields, influencing human
resources, overall agency policy, and programmatic approaches.
CAMI and CERDM transformed World Vision’s (WV)
1
approach
to development and prompted change at a fundamental level
within participating communities to proactively address their
development and disaster issues, and make and enact plans to
build their own resilience.
The communities that participated in CAMI and CERDM
continue to grow in awareness and capacity. Many feel ready to
withstand a major disaster, and some demonstrated their newly-
built resilience through Hurricane Michelle.
Disasters of varying magnitudes occur regularly throughout
Latin America and the Caribbean. Over time, community
resources become eroded, making it increasingly difficult for
communities to break the cycle of poverty. Communities are faced
with the ongoing challenge of development while trying to deal
with frequent disaster events. When a disaster occurs, commu-
nity resources can be destroyed or depleted by the response. For
example, a flood or hurricane may destroy a community’s crops,
resulting in lack of food and income. This may worsen existing
problems such as malnutrition and debt. The community’s devel-
opment process is seriously disrupted and set back, and the end
result is deepening poverty.
Many communities realize that action is necessary in order to
lessen the impact of these cyclical events and the resultant deep-
ening poverty, but they lack the experience, knowledge and
organization to address them. Their financial and other resources
are limited. Within this context, WV identified the need to imple-
ment a community-based emergency response and disaster
mitigation programme in its Area Development Programme (ADP)
areas.
After Hurricane Mitch, 81,224 people in two World Vision
Honduras (WVH) regions were affected. As part of its
Humanitarian and Emergency Affairs (HEA) strategy, WVH
devised a community organization and training project to
strengthen local communities’ resilience to disaster, using funds
from the CAMI project of the United States Agency for
International Development (USAID), and with support from WV
US and the organizational structure of WVH.
A great deal of Mitch’s damage resulted from insufficient water-
shed management, lack of flood warning systems and flood
control infrastructure. However, equally if not more important
than infrastructure, was a lack of community organization and
preparedness for the initial response. Mitch helped drive home
the urgent need to put people first and to focus on their readiness
and resilience.
Maria-Luisa Interiano, director of CERDM, commented: “If you
have people with basic training, no matter if you have insufficient
watershed management, the communities will be able to save
their lives, and that is the most important – even more impor-
tant than infrastructure.” CAMI was a catalyst for WVH to begin
integrating risk management into the whole of what it does, via
a ground-up process that continues today.
CAMI was one of a range of programmes developed by USAID
to fund prevention and mitigation activities in Central America.
USAID summarizes CAMI as “a post-Hurricane Mitch programme
designed to reduce the impact of natural disasters by increasing
Building local resilience for
community transformation in three
Latin American countries
Melisa Bodenhamer, Maria-Luisa Interiano and Carolyn Rose-Avila, World Vision