The Catamarca Mudslides

For the second blog post from the Earthquakes group, I wanted to talk about the recent storm that hit Argentina last week, especially the mudslides that have impacted the Catamarca region. 

On Thursday night, five people were killed in landslides triggered by the recent heavy rains. At least eight people (five women and three children) remain missing, and another 600 have been evacuated from the towns of El Rodeo and Sijan. The storm pushed heavy boulders into houses, cars, and roads, causing untold property damage. President Christina Fernandez has ordered government agencies to assist with relief and reconstruction in the affected areas, and Security Minister Cecilia Rodriguez has been sent in to join the crisis committee. She specializes in dealing with emergencies and disasters, and has experience working in Haiti, Panama, Kosovo, and El Salvador. 

Nearly all of Argentina was affected by this storm, with a cold wave passing through that included rain, hail, and heavy winds. However, Catamarca was overwhelmingly the area most affected. This is because the area is geographically more vulnerable. Communities in mountainous areas are more likely to have mudslides due to the amount of steep slopes, especially when they are near sources of running water. However, this area was also vulnerable because it is more rural. Since the houses are not as well-constructed as in other areas, and with less resources in the event of an emergency, these communities were already set up for failure. This is another example of what we were talking about in class; how those with less money and less resources are affected by natural and man-made disasters more. One famous example was the earthquake that hit the island of Hispanola. While the Dominican Republic was able to recover with only a minor crisis, their poorer brothers in Haiti has less resources and suffered a full-blown disaster, from which they never would have recovered without foreign aid. As of yet, there have been no reports of what exactly President Fernandez intends to do with regards to aid, and how the "crisis committee" and Minister Rodriguez plan to start reconstruction.

What intrigued me about this disaster was how commonplace it seems. We are so accustomed to seeing huge disasters on the news that a mudslide in a place as far away as Argentina seems like a minor occurrence. The question I have is: how does the media decide which disasters are "important" enough to report on? Is it the ones with the highest death toll? The most dramatic disasters? Or simply the ones they think the audience will care about? We do tend to report more on those disasters that fall closer to home, like when Hurricane Sandy hit New York in 2012. We also focus on disasters that appeal to our humanity, like the devastation of Typhoon Haiyan in the Phillipines. I think that this would be an interesting question to discuss in class, because with the growing popularity and influence of social media, there is no doubt that it now plays an important role in highlighting and solving international crises.