USAID/OFDA Assists Paraguay with Floods, Fire, and Drought

Foreign Disaster Assistance (USAID/OFDA) Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean, located in San José, Costa Rica, has been actively involved in disaster risk reduction efforts in Paraguay. Heavy rains and extensive flooding in early 2012 affected approximately 80,000 people in the Chaco Region of Paraguay, damaging or destroying thousands of homes, rendering many roads impassable, and adversely affecting agriculture, health, and education services. The Chaco Region is a vast, sparsely populated, semi-arid region devoted largely to cattle raising, with the majority of the flood-affected population being indigenous people who worked as hired labor in the cattle industry. In response to the disaster, USAID/OFDA provided nearly $750,000 in humanitarian assistance to Paraguay, through the Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA) for the local procurement of emergency relief supplies and shelter materials to assist with resettlement efforts. ADRA immediately delivered emergency relief supplies, including mattresses, mosquito nets, and cleaning supplies, to 650 families in the most severely affected communities. In the months that followed, ADRA coordinated closely with the Paraguayan National Emergency Secretariat (SEN) and USAID/OFDA to design and begin building transitional shelters to benefit approximately 3,150 people. The USAID/OFDA-funded transitional shelters were constructed using locally procured materials, with ADRA working closely with SEN to ensure that the shelters met the needs of the affected communities. Since 1990, USAID/OFDA has provided more than $1.6 million in humanitarian assistance to Paraguay in response to disasters, including floods, fire, drought, storms, and extreme cold. In Paraguay, USAID/OFDA responds primarily to flooding, followed by fire and drought emergencies. The USAID/OFDA Regional Disaster Assistance Program (RDAP) has been instrumental in providing training and technical assistance to the Government of Paraguay (GoP) to help strengthen national disaster risk management capabilities and response preparedness. RDAP projects in Paraguay have centered on developing institutional capacities, especially those of the GoP National Emergency Secretariat (SEN), Ministry of Health, and Ministry of Education and Culture, in addition to the Paraguayan Red Cross, fire departments, and police. Efforts have focused on strengthening post-disaster damage evaluation and needs analysis (DANA), forest fire prevention and control, incident command system (ICS) implementation, school safety, and disaster risk reduction (DRR).