Santa Teresa Mudslides

We're from Portland, Oregon, USA and we love our hometown.  Really, we do.   Cool neighborhoods, great food scene, lots of adult beverages made here, too.  But… (you knew there was a 'but' coming) Stumptowners complain when it rains.  And there are complaints when it's hot.  Or windy.  Or humid.  And, most ridiculously, an insane panic overcomes the populace, school is cancelled, events postponed, lines form at hardware stores for shovels and deicer, tire shops are overrun with soccer moms in SUVs getting studded tires and chains, etc.  The entire city seemingly shuts down if there is even a hint of a threat of there being a chance that there might be a possibility of a likelihood that maybe it could snow.  

Over the last 30 years, through 2013, Portland averaged 39.14 inches of rain annually.  The record for one day rainfall is 6.68 inches, way back on December 13, 1882.  Yeah, of course it's a little 'apples to oranges' because we're in the tropics here - but there is rain and then there is RAIN.  

The storm that caused part of Volcán Concepción to let loose near the tiny village of Santa Teresa dumped 14.9 inches of rain in just under 24 hours.  Think about that for a minute.  The island received 38% of Portland's annual rainfall in a single day.

Now imagine the floods and the wall of mud striking in the dark.  The landslide happened around 8:30  or so in the evening.  Thankfully - if there is such a thing - most people were still awake.  In hindsight, it would have been much worse if it had hit in the middle of the night, when people were sleeping.  In all, there were 5 landslides that hit the island, all on the Concepción side.  Surprisingly, there was only one casualty, albeit a tragic one.  A 5 year old girl was swept from her mothers' arms while they were trying to cross the floods to get to higher ground.

Two weeks after we got back from our final border run, we hopped on the bikes and headed for Santa Teresa, to get an up close look at the devastation caused during the heavy rains a few weeks back.  We had seen a little of the damage when we'd traveled via taxi from Moyogalpa to our place, but we only caught glimpses as twilight was setting in when we went by.  

We left the house early to beat the heat and humidity.  The unpaved part, the section from our village to Santa Cruz where the paved road starts, was much worse than we'd ever seen it.  The heavy rainfall had washed away a lot of the dirt, leaving the rocks.  And because trucks and buses started running as soon as they could, even when the road was still saturated, the potholes, dips and ruts were bigger, deeper and a little more treacherous.  Still, cruising on two wheels is actually easier than picking a line through it on four, so we made decent time.  In true 'Dave on a bike' fashion, I still managed to hit most of the sizable rocks anyway.

A new 6-inch curb across the road.

We went through Santa Cruz and headed across the isthmus and Playa Santo Domingo.  We stopped in at El Malinche for breakfast.  We had visited this little roadside produce stand/pulperia/restaurant before, when we biked over for our anniversary weekend in September.  We sat down near the beach and had a great breakfast.  After that, we kept pedaling toward the north end of Isla de Ometepe and the road near Santa Teresa.

Looking at Maderas… I can see my house from here!

Like I said, the unpaved part of the road was b-a-d and we started seeing the impact of the storm on the paved road soon enough.  Dirt and rocks littered the road, the only clear path through being where the vehicles had been passing.  Mind you, this is 2.5 weeks after the storm.

You can see the makeup of the road in the pictures above.  They pour a concrete border on either side, then lay interlocking paver stones to construct the road surface.  We got to a point where the road gradually climbs and saw that all the earth between the concrete border and the V-shaped gutter had washed away.  The immensity of this is unreal.  
Check it:

Photo #1 - 

The gutter couldn't handle the amount of water, obviously!

To provide a sense of scale, here is a closer shot, with me standing next to the gutter.  It gives you an idea just how much dirt washed away:

Photo #2 - 

Photo #3 -

A little farther on, we came to the school.  And… yikes.  The community had some of the classrooms cleared but as you can see, it was still quite a mess, even a couple of weeks later.

The two classrooms in this picture appeared to be cleaned and in use.

This classroom?  Not so much.

It was already getting hot but we wanted to get to the section of road where the biggest part of the landslide crossed over on the way downhill, so we cycled on.  We saw many people still cleaning up rocks and debris - shoveling and sweeping the dirt, piling up the bigger stones to build walls and fences or to shore up existing structures.

This is the road, normally two lanes.  You can get a feel for how deep the slide was.

The mud and debris were piled up like snow in winter.

We reached the main slide area and took in the carnage.  We could see up the slope of Volcán Concepción to where the earth let loose.  And we could see down the slope where the sea of mud made its way toward the lake, toward Santa Teresa.  We stayed on the main road, opting not to go all the way to the lakeside village.  We still needed to pedal home and this would have added several miles and hours to the day.  In fact, we ended up riding about 22 miles by the time we go home.  Really, check out the Garmin map for proof.

Plus, it would have been a little weird to be taking pictures of peoples' personal travesty.  Pics from the road would be just fine, thank you.  A little less of an intrusion.  While we live on the island and have been 'adopted' as locals in our community, we wanted to respect the people who were most impacted by the storm and not be 'tourists'.  Hope this makes sense.

The vegetation used to grow right up to the road, just like at the right in the picture.

Nothing but rocks and dirt.  A veritable moon-scape.

In the photo above, under the trees well back from the road, there used to be a house.  While we were taking our pictures, there were people gathered, singing and praying.  A very somber atmosphere.

You can see the scar up the volcano where this slide originated.

Back home, we could see the mudslide scar from the beach.

You can see uprooted trees in the background.

  

The main water channel carved a deep course.

We headed for home, stopping for Cokes at a cool little beachside restaurant on the north end of Playa Santo Domingo.  After we crossed the isthmus and reached the Maderas end, we had lunch at El Encanto.  This hotel/restaurant is located a few hundred meters off the main road and has spectacular views over the wetlands of the Rio Istian area.  The food was quite good and the owner was a neat guy, fun to chat with.  We had a leisurely meal and enjoyed NOT sitting on our bike seats for a while.

Give me bread, but give me roses, too: We enjoyed the view and the garden, as well as the food.

After lunch, we rode all the way home, grimacing over the unpaved road to Merida.  A couple of kilometers from the house we came across some kids playing baseball in the road.  They were surprised when a big gringo got off his bike, asked for the bat and showed off his baseball skills - or a lack thereof.  Still, they were laughing and it was a memorable moment.
  

Mudslides not withstanding, there's always time for street baseball.

They were skeptical of David's American style batting, until he struck out.

We're very glad we made the ride over to see the results of Mother Nature's smackdown of our island home.  We made a donation to help Santa Teresa's schools get back up and running.  But the people here are resilient.  They aren't used to getting help from the outside world, so they deal with things like this on their own and then they carry on.  Nica's are a strong people who pull together and make it happen, all the time and every time.  Life carries on.

*****     *****     *****     *****

Note:
Below are some links with more stories about the record rainfall and photos of the damage:

An expat's blog

From lainfo.es

A YouTube clip taken the day after the slides