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March 2007                                                                            Volume 12 - Number 3

Perspectives...

Recalling Hurricane Mitch
By David Martens

From late October to early November 1998, Hurricane Mitch emerged from the Caribbean Sea and slowly rip-sawed its way across a large area of Central America.  Estimates ran as high as 18,000 dead, although the true number still is not known.  Countries bordering the Caribbean – Nicaragua and Honduras – were the hardest hit, but all the land from Costa Rica to Mexico felt the effects of the storm.  One of the recurring nightmares recalled from that period were entire villages buried above their rooflines in mud.  A Category 5 storm as measured on the Saffir-Simpson Scale, Mitch was the second most deadly hurricane to hit Central America in the last 250 years.

The catastrophe wrought by the storm was immediately apparent, and international disaster relief actions were quick to get organized.  A major part of the US response materialized in the form of the 101st Airborne Division out of Fort Campbell, Kentucky.  With many roads and bridges in the area washed away and the need to move tons of relief equipment into the Central American interior, the special skills of the 101st Airborne Division were in dire need.  The division’s fleet of heavy-lift cargo helicopters would be used to ferry people and equipment into the most isolated, most devastated regions of Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua.

The 101st Airborne Division formed the backbone of Operation FUERTE APOYO (“Strong Support”).  The unit self-deployed into El Salvador, forming up under a Joint Task Force at Comalapa Air Base.  Being on the western side of the Central American Highlands, close to the Pacific Ocean, Comalapa was spared most of the destruction visited upon other parts of the region.  Comalapa also had a sufficiently long runway to handle an untold number of cargo plane landings by the United States Air Force.  I served as the senior meteorologist for the task force, and with weather teams in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua, we provided round-the-clock weather support to humanitarian assistance flights transiting the region.

Two tasks rose to immediate importance upon the arrival of the Joint Task Force.  The first was the need to provide fresh drinking water to the people.  Most of the villages in this part of the world drew water from community wells.  When the enormous amount of Mitch’s rainfall combined with the steep terrain, the subsequent torrent swept everything into the town wells.  Army soldiers sent out to the field were lowered by winch down into the darkened wells and began to pick out all manner of debris including the carcasses of dead animals.  Once free of the contamination, Marines using Reverse Osmosis Water Purification Units restocked the wells with fresh water.  These operations were repeated over and over again from town to town.

The second task of importance was restoring the connecting infrastructure of some of the outlying villages to the remainder of the country.  Many small bridges were washed away during the storm.  These bridges were the only way the villages could get their goods to a central market for sale.  Engineers from the FUERTE APOYO team rebuilt numerous foot bridges and shored up several larger bridges in order to reestablish the vital infrastructure for these people.

Once these life-sustaining activities were complete, the Joint Task Force settled into a three-month period of direct humanitarian assistance.  Doctors, dentists, and veterinarians moved across the countries on a daily basis, dispensing medicine and information to the villagers.  Other missions were undertaken as time permitted.  Many Americans had forwarded food, clothes, and toys to be distributed among the people.  In an effort to ensure that the aid might reach those most in need, we enquired at the Humanitarian Operations Center (HOC) where the destitute might be found.  The HOC team sent us off to the landfill outside the capital city, where a regular gathering of people could be found picking through the trash delivered from San Salvador.

During my three months in Central America I had opportunities to fly on some of the relief missions.  Out of one widow I could see the blue Pacific, on most days living up to its name.  Out another window, however, I could see numerous cinder cones dotting the countryside, reminders that we were on the eastern edge of the “Ring of Fire”.  I could only say to myself, “We’ll be back here again”.