Guatemala

Institution : FLACSO Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales - Sede Académica Guatemala Contact : Gisella Gellert Description : The Guatemala database has been fed with diverse sources of newspaper archives information, among which they are La Prensa Libre newspaper, that covers up more than 805 reports and also the newpapers Siglo XXI, La Hora and El Periódico. DesInventar's data do not represent a complete statistic of the occurred disasters in Guatemala but a sample determined by the information sources used. However this empirical accumulation of data (2418 reports) during a relatively extended period (1988 - 2000) let the FLACSO team identify general risk patterns existing in the country , so as the degree of heterogeneity and complexity. Also, it was possible to include events that are not normally recorded by the institution in charge of the attention of disasters either because they were small (did not constitute a declared and assisted emergency) or because it was a kind of disaster not covered by the institution (fires, epidemies, etc.). A national evaluation of the data makes possible mostly in these two ways a sensibilization to understand that: -Guatemala is exposed to a great risk range (25 types) and the dominant ones are those in which formation the social component is highly present or even exclusively present (fires, floods, slidings, epydemies, forest fires ). -The great number of disasters recorded corresponds mostly to small and local events. The events that can be considered as middle and with regional impacts constitute the exception and only the Mitch hurrycane ( that isn't included yet in the database) can be denominated as a national impact disaster (although its impacts were limited to some regions of Guatemala and resulted in hundreds of scattered local disasters). Summary: DataCards: 2418 Period: 1988 - 2000 Highest Mortality: EPIDEMIC: 701 Deaths; 131 DataCards LANDSLIDE: 289 Deaths; 395 DataCards FIRE: 144 Deaths; 822 DataCards Highest Housing Damages: FLOOD: 12450 Houses; 406 DataCards EARTHQUAKE: 2801 Houses; 34 DataCards LANDSLIDE: 1794 Houses; 395 DataCards