In Guatemala We Just Call it Friday.

Guatemala, Central America – Friday, October 12, 2018 – Heavy rains and storms are causing flooding and evacuations across five departments (states). Volcán Fuego erupts, and a lahar descends along its slopes prompting more evacuations. Major roads are cutoff by landslides. A magnitude 5.8 earthquake shakes the Department of Escuintla. Volcán Pacaya, only nineteen miles from the nation’s capitol, erupts sending a cascade of lava down it’s sides.

In the United States, were this to happen all in one day and all in an area the size of Tennessee, we would call it a major disaster. In Guatemala, it’s called “Friday”. – Neale Brown, AMEDICAusa

This is just one day’s news from the country in which we work. This is why we spend so much of our time and effort assisting with the training and equipping the firefighters and other emergency services here in Central America.

There is no major airlift of technicians and relief supplies, no giant, multinational effort to assist. It’s up to the local firefighters, underpaid, under equipped, and stretched very thinly, to provide what rescue and relief they can. With second hand gear, often of 1980’s vintage…aging and often unsound vehicles, tools that are several generations outdated and little in the way of personal protection, the Bomberos  are Guatemala’s only line of defense.

Getting to a Disaster before it happens

While most disaster relief organizations rely on their warehouses of supplies, large “relief” funds and on-call response teams, we believe that there is a better, more effective way to provide the relief.  For large scale disasters, the reality is that it takes a minimum of three to seven days to get foreign teams on the ground. Once on the ground, it takes several more days to get organized. Only then do they begin to make an impact. This is helpful to the survivors, but no real rescues are made. For smaller incidents, unless it is particularly noteworthy, there is little, if any, international relief at all.

The sad fact is, those persons injured, lost or entrapped in a disaster need to be reached within the first few hours after the event. The local first responders, the firefighters and paramedics in the disaster zone, are the folks who truly save lives.

By pro-actively concentrating our efforts on training and equipping these men and women, AMEDICAusa, our partners and our donors, make a more effective use of our dollars. We have a much longer reach, and effect more lives then just showing up after the fact. And that kind of relief aid can save lives every day, on the incidents that do not make the international news.

Even on Friday.