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Mon, 02:32 21 Jul 2008 GMT17

 
Hurricane Stan

Last reviewed: 23-03-2007

Tragedy reveals shocking wealth gap


When Hurricane Stan struck the tiny disaster-prone Central American nation of Guatemala on Oct. 1, 2005, it triggered fatal mudslides which exposed the precarious existence of thousands of subsistence farmers forced to live on steep slopes, while the country's most fertile lands are used to grow export crops under the control of large-scale landowners.

  • Hundreds buried in mudslides
  • 337,000 needed food aid in the following year
  • Financial cost of $988 million

    Every year, dozens die in landslides during the rainy season, which runs from May to November, but this year - a bad one for hurricanes - was worse than usual. The flooding wiped out huge swathes of subsistence crops, leaving thousands without enough food, income, or jobs. Aid workers said it exposed the country's lack of provision for preventing and responding to disasters, despite the lessons of Hurricane Mitch, which devastated the region in 1999.

    The disaster also highlighted that many rural communities haven't forgiven or forgotten the army's role in a brutal 36-year conflict which ended in 1996. Some villages remain highly wary - even downright confrontational - with soldiers, and refused to allow them entry even when they’d been sent to help.

    Stan's was the eighth most expensive disaster of 2005, according to the Brussels-based Centre for Research on Epidemiology of Disasters. Hurricanes in the United States and floods in China topped the list.

    Key facts


    Number killed 1,513 (Emergency Disasters Data Base, Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium)
    Number affected 475,314 (Emergency Disasters Data Base)
    Families made homeless by Stan 9,000 (U.N. World Food Programme, WFP)
    People in need of food aid 337,000 (WFP)
    Economic losses $988 million, almost 3.6 percent of Guatemala's 2004 GDP (Emergency Disasters Data Base)
    Guatemala's total population 12.9 million (U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2006)
    Percentage of Guatemalans living in rural areas 51 (U.N. Development Report 2006
    Officially recognised languages 23, of which 21 are spoken by descendents of the ancient Maya. The other two are Garifuna - spoken by black indigenous people on the Atlantic coast - and Xinca, which has few surviving speakers in the country's arid southeast.

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