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Guatemala: Floods associated with Tropical Cyclones - Early Action Protocol summary (EAP2022GT01)

Countries
Guatemala
Sources
IFRC
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The IFRC Disaster Relief Emergency Fund (DREF) has approved a total allocation of CHF 478,796 from its Forecast based Action (FbA) mechanism for the Guatemalan Red Cross. The approved amount consists of an immediate allocation of CHF 252,051 for readiness and pre-positioning and CHF 226,745 automatically allocated to implement early actions once the defined triggers are met.

The Forecast-Based Action Fund (FbA) part of the DREF is a funding mechanism managed by the DREF. Allocations for the FbA are made from the anticipatory pillar of the DREF. Unearmarked contributions to the fund are encouraged to ensure funding availability for the Early Action Protocols (EAPs) being developed.

SUMMARY OF THE EARLY ACTION PROTOCOL

The Republic of Guatemala, due to its geographic location, is located in a high-risk zone for the effects of natural phenomena, mainly geological and hydrometeorological, which represent a threat to human life and health, to the loss of livelihoods, as well as damage to basic infrastructure and means of production, affecting the quality of life of Guatemalans.

Guatemala is exposed to multiple hazards, such as slope movements, floods, volcanic eruptions, forest fires and droughts. To prioritize which of these hazards has affected Guatemala the most, the DesInventar Project1 disaster database was used to extract the historical impact of natural disasters. The results are presented in the following graph:

The graphic above summarizes the number of people affected by different hazards in Guatemala between 1990 and 2019. It is observed that the hazard that most affected the Guatemalan population, in the reference time period, is landslides. For the purposes of this document, it was determined that there is currently no capacity for landslide forecasting.

The second hazard with the highest number of people affected historically is flooding, for which there are forecasts that allow the implementation of early actions, so the threat of floods associated with tropical cyclones was the one prioritized to address the first Early Action Plan (EAP) of the Guatemalan Red Cross. Table 1 below summarizes the most important tropical cyclones that caused floods in the Guatemalan territory, their region of occurrence, number of people affected and estimates of economic damage caused.