MapAction's response to Hurricanes Eta and Iota
OCHA’s Regional Office for the Latin America and Caribbean (ROLAC) formally requested a MapAction team to provide remote support in response to Hurricane Eta - a category 4 storm. The team consisting of 5 volunteers started their support on 6th November. The priority for the team in the first instance was to focus on core admin maps, such as this one focusing on administrative departments in Honduras.
And this map, showing a general country overview of Guatemala. Core maps are highly important at the start of a response as they are often the basis for all future country level mapping.
As information began to filter in during the first phase of the response to Hurricane Eta, the team moved from producing core admin maps, to 3W mapping (Who does what and where?) to help the government and humanitarian responders to be well coordinated in their response - this map from 10th November shows the emergency response activities by sector taking place in different municipalities of Honduras.
Along with 3W mapping, situational overview maps are really important in the first phase - this map from the 14th November shows the number of persons evacuated and the number of evacuation centres per municipality, helping first responders to make strategic decisions and focus their attention in the immediate aftermath of the disaster.
These situational maps have been continuously updated across the response period to ensure that emergency responders are working with the latest information - this map is from 18th November
More specific requests were also received to help focus attention on particular geographic areas or future risks - this map shows the locations of dams in Honduras and their capacity levels.
And this map shows the potential flooding (inundation) that would be caused if the El Cajon dam fails. This map helped inform OCHA on decision making regarding which communities to evacuate in areas threatened by rising water levels.
The progress of a second storm, Hurricane IOTA - a category 5 storm - in the third week of November has complicated and exacerbated the situation in central America.
This map shows the storm track for Hurricane Iota as of 17th November, with potentially affected administrative departments for Nicaragua and Honduras. It also includes previous flooded areas from Hurricane Eta.
“Iota is hampering the response to Eta, severely degrading logistic routes and complicating the information picture,” said MapAction’s Operations Director Chris Davies. “Our maps are helping teams on the ground direct resources where they’re most needed, as safely as possible. We will continue to provide support to our ROLAC colleagues and are anticipating and preparing for additional requests for our assistance.”
Baseline population statistics in El Salvador - one of the core maps recently produced in response to Hurricane Iota.
The demand for MapAction's support has increased due to the cumulative effect of two hurricanes in a three week period. The MapAction team is continuing to support OCHA ROLAC during this period, with more than 60 maps produced to date.
For all the maps and datasets related to Hurricanes Eta and Iota, please visit the MapAction Mapping and Data Repository.
