October 28 2011
El Salvador: SOS Children's Villages helps flood-affected families
28/10/2011 - In the worst floods to hit El Salvador in recent history, SOS Children’s Villages is helping families over the lack of food, water and sanitation.
The amount of rain that has been falling in El Salvador since early October is the highest in 50 years, even more than during Hurricane Mitch in 1998. An estimated 20,000 homes have been flooded and some 56,000 families were forced to evacuate.
SOS Children’s Villages has been giving food and water to hundreds of families in social centres and and community homes through which it supports children and families in several communities.The status of 75 families living in communities that have been cut off by flood waters remains unknown.
While there has been severe damage to SOS family houses and other structures in SOS Children’s Villages’ programmes, nobody participating in SOS programmes has been hurt so far.
The United Nations have described the current flood disaster that is affecting El Salvador and several other central American countries as “one of the worst in its history”. Several low-pressure weather systems caused heavy rains that began on 10 October and have caused more than 120 deaths and affected around 1.24 million people in El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras and Costa Rica.