Guatemala is the Most “At Risk” Non-Island Country in the world.
A recent UN sponsored study finds Guatemala’s risk of natural disasters to be extraordinarily high. While we knew this instinctively, the report confirms the difficulties our neighbors face from catastrophic events.
Santa Cruz Barillas, a remote municipality of 140,000 people, is a good example of both Guatemala’s disaster problems and AMEDICAusa’s solutions. Barillas is located in the high mountains at the northern edge of Huehuetenango province, not far from the border with Mexico. Its people are a mix of Qʼanjobʼal Maya indigenous peoples and Ladinos. Most are poor.
Though it is far from Guatemala’s volcanoes, Barillas is at risk not only from the day to day emergencies common throughout the world, but also potentially catastrophic events specific to the area. The terrain is steep. Deforestation and the ever present rains present significant risk of major landslides. It is pummeled by rain storms both from the Caribbean and Pacific. Road washouts occur every year.
Forest and other wildland fires are common in the dry season. The terrain and lack of roads makes them very difficult to control.
Santa Cruz Barillas also sits very close to the Ixcan Fault, which has historically generated earthquakes as great as magnitude 7.5. Many of the structures are of brick/adobe construction, ill suited to bear the movement of a major earthquake.
At Risk… and Alone
Against these threats the people of Barillas depend on one small company of the Bomberos Voluntarios firefighters. Consisting of seven paid (including the chief) and eight volunteers, the 109 Compañía Bomberos Voluntarios does what it can, providing medical aid and emergency services 24 hour a day to both the city and the surrounding villages. They are grossly short of equipment. Their 1963 (yes, 1963…) Chevy fire engine hasn’t run in ten years, they have little personal protective gear, ancient helmets and no airpacks. They fight fire by bucket brigade. Their nearest working fire engine is over four hours away.
“This is why AMEDICAusa was called to Barillas. Nowhere is the ‘thin red line’ of firefighters more embattled than in the remote mountains of Guatemala. “-Neale Brown, President, AMEDICAusa
Going the extra mile.
Travelling to Barillas is not for the faint of heart. The limited access is over a lonely, high altitude “highway” which lacks pavement, road signs, guard rails, services and often visibility. The road crests at well over 10,000 feet. With steep grades, often near 10%, engines strain and starve for air. Potholes are pond size, rocks and small boulders are common, and landslides frequent. It is just wide enough for two careful vehicles to pass. Along with this, daily rainstorms and thick fog occur in the afternoon, and an average speed of around ten miles an hour is the best to be hoped for.
Our trip began at o’dark thirty, leaving from Retalhuleu, near the coast. We are in the “AMEDICA-mobile” a 2007 Hyundai Tucson, two wheel drive SUV, with a 170K miles on her. (More about this later.) Fresh from the mechanic, we are hoping she is at last in good enough shape for a back-country trip.
Laughably optimistic, Google predicts an nine hour drive to cover the 175 mile journey. Armed with a full fuel tank, coffee, ham sandwiches, chicharrones, bottles of flavored agua pura and our fire gear we set off on a climb of the central mountains of Guatemala. We started with the idea that we will arrive early enough in the day to meet with the director of the 109 Company in the afternoon. Alas, that was but a dream.
Mountain Climbing
Climbing the first mountain passes was marred only by the normal predawn parade of overloaded trucks and suicidal bus drivers passing around blind corners on the wrong side of the road. Normal enough for Guatemala. It garners no more than the average number of malditos from me.
Once we begin the climb out of the city of Huehuetenango, already at over 6000 feet, it got interesting. The Sierra de los Cuchumatanes mountains are steep and the roads are “iffy”, at best. The AMEDICA-Mobile struggles for air and we are often slowed to black-smoking, walking speed. It does give us a lot of time to admire the views, when not slalom driving around wheel-eating potholes.
Cresting the first mountain range, there is a wide, relatively flat plateau, broken up by rocky outcroppings. Sheep are the common livelihood here and small shepard’s casitas dot the plain. We are occasionally delayed by wandering ruminant traffic jams. Sheep are apparently immune to the noise of a car horn.
Ominously, clouds begin forming in the next range. When we attempt the steeper climb into the high mountains, we discover two things. First, the pavement disappears between the mountain towns. Second, pockets of dense fog are becoming trapped between peaks. Once again we slow to a crawl.
Driving Blind
Between the sections of missing pavement are several picturesque towns. Signs along the road are now split between Spanish and Qʼanjobʼal. Beautiful Churches and more traditional Maya clothing. San Juan Ixcoy, Soloma, San Miguel Ixtatán and the infamous Santa Eulalia. (Note, Google Maps and Waze work here but there is a LOT of missing data.) If you get turned around in Santa Eulalia, you will find yourself at the bottom of a 12% grade that is impossible to climb when it is wet. When you say goodby to Santa Eulalia you also say goodbye to any semblance of pavement for the rest of the trip.
Having said Buenas Tardes to pavement and bouncing furiously among now unavoidable holes and rocks, we soon get to say goodbye to visibility as well. Riding along the 10,000 foot mark, we are enveloped in the afternoon fog and rain that is a daily occurrence here. Gone are the vistas, totally hidden by the clouds. This may be fortunate, as the precarious drop at the side of the road and the lack of shoulders and guardrails are equally obscured.
We are driving by braille now. Tailgating the rare vehicle in front of us to guide on their lights is helpful. The occasional pedestrian or stray dog, horse or pig appear ghostlike in front of us, then vanish with equal rapidity.
After four hours of “nose against the glass” driving we arrive finally in Barillas. The fog dissipates as we drive into the valley and the city opens up before us. There is pavement (in some places) again. Five hours after our hoped-for arrival time… tired, hungry and mud spattered, we get a quick bite and retire to our hotel.
A Community at Risk.
Barillas is a big town, but from an Emergency Services perspective, it is a lonely place. Mutual aid, help from other fire departments, is not coming. It is four and a half hours or more to the next fire station. Far from the seat of government in Guatemala City, they have been fighting for two decades for a paved highway to no avail. More merchandise comes to town “informally” across the Mexican border than via more traditional routes. But you can’t strap a fire engine to a burro carry it across the Mexican frontier.
We met with the firefighters and officers at the modest fire station near the center of town. Welcoming us as brother firefighters, and proudly touring us around their spartan quarters, they are eager to discuss the issues of the company and the problems they face. In fact, both shifts and a few volunteers are in quarters for us.
“You can’t strap a fire engine to a burro and carry it across the Mexican frontier”
Some of the challenges faced by the firefighters are obvious. Terrain, narrow, often unpaved streets, haphazard electrical wiring, both inside and in the transmission lines, lack of zoning are omnipresent in Guatemala. The mercado, a large area of ramshackle, semi-permanent stalls housing small stores, is the major target hazard. A fire here could devastate the city.
Not so obvious is that the firefighters themselves are at risk. Lacking appropriate personal gear for firefighting, sufficient water and even a working fire engine the risk of serious injury is high. Even the routine EMS run presents significant hazards.
“They robbed us in the ambulance last month” relates one firefighter. “They took everything, shoes, jackets, money and equipment. All they left us was the ambulance and stretcher.” The incident took place at around midnight on a lonely stretch of the highway, in between towns. (This story added significantly to the stress later when we get stranded by a mechanical breakdown on the highway in the middle of the night.).
AMEDICAusa Bringing Aid to Barillas Firefighters
Our mission is, in large part, disaster relief. It is our belief that equipping and training the local first responders is far more effective than simply banking supplies and money for use after an event. It also provides for aid to at risk communities for incidents that don’t make international news.
We have already prepared a shipment of personal protective equipment for Barillas, sending more than a dozen complete sets of firefighting gear to the firefighters. We have also tentatively designated a fire engine for donation to the company. It is the least we could do. Of course, we will also be providing the training to go with it.
More trips to the mountains are in our future.
It was a Dark and Stormy Night
We thought we had had enough adventure on our route into Barillas. Leaving early in the morning was an attempt to at least miss the afternoon fogs and rain on our return. Unfortunately, this was not to be. We rattled through the early portion of the trip, but rains caught us as we arrived in Santa Eulalia. This was enough to prevent not only us, but an entire parade of other vehicles from climbing the mud slicked monster slope through town. Stuck in the vehicular clump, we waited more than two hours for the police to find and clear an alternate route for traffic to pass. With the added time it was almost dark when we began the climb to the summit outside San Juan Ixcoy.
We almost made it.
Just a kilometer below the summit, before reaching the plateau, the AMEDICA-Mobile gave up the ghost and absolutely refused to go farther. After dark, in a fog and rain storm, in the middle of the road, without shoulders, and at the end of a blind corner, she stalled. Starved for air, no amount of coaxing could get the vehicle to move more than a few feet.
Many words and phrases, in several languages, came immediately to mind. None are printable here. We are at risk in the middle of absolutely nowhere.
We Get Rescued… again
There are a great many advantages to having friends among the firefighters here in Guatemala. Like firefighters everywhere, they will give you the shirt off their back (sometimes literally) if you need it. The AMEDICA-Mobile has failed us a couple of times in the past, usually near a Fire Station where we were able to get assistance.
While the firefighters in Huehuetenango are still at least a couple of hours away, I chance a call to them to ask if they know of a tow truck in the area. An hour later they have our rescue arranged. Police arrive to help us move the car out of traffic and provide a little security while we wait. Comandante Walter Gomez in his command car and an ambulance arrive in two hours to carry us and our gear back to Huehuetenango and a hotel, and a tow truck is dispatched at first light to retrieve the AMEDICA-mobile and take it to the fire company mechanic.
We dined on cupcakes and coffee that evening, but not being stuck in the mountains all night (or being crushed by an overloaded tractor trailer) was a huge gift, as was the ride back to Retalhuleu the next day.
Donations Gladly Accepted
Normally at this point in a news post, I would add a little blurb to ask for donations, and it is time for our annual donation drive. The fact is we NEED a different vehicle. As we reach out to more remote areas the need for a heavier duty, four wheel drive, RELIABLE vehicle, capable of transporting our instructors and equipment, is becoming more obvious. It is hard to drive anywhere in Guatemala without crossing the mountains, and the old Hyundai is on her last legs. I guarantee your donations will go a long way.
Including that extra mile….