ALERT: Peru- Flooding Continues; State Department Issues Travel Alert (March 24, 2017)

March 24, 2017

ALERT: Peru- Flooding Continues; State Department Issues Travel Alert 

Severe flooding continues to affect northern Peru, although major tourist sites farther south like Lake Titicaca, Cusco and Machu Picchu have escaped damage. The U.S. Department of State has issued a Travel Alert regarding travel to the regions of Peru impacted by flooding, advising “U.S. citizens should avoid travel to areas under a state of emergency.”

According to Accuweather:

“El Niño-like storms have drenched the nation since December, leading to catastrophic mudslides and flooding. More than 80 people have been killed due to the storms. More than 650,000 citizens have been affected with more than 145,000 properties damaged, local officials reported.”

Deutsche Welle reports:

“The mudslides have caused yet another problem for the people in Lima: together with plastic waste dragged from the shores, the mud has clogged the filters of the Sedapal water company forcing it to disconnect most of the city from supplies. Water is now brought to certain distribution points by trucks, where people line up with buckets and jerrycans to at least cover their basic needs. In the first days following the water cut, the supermarkets quickly ran out of bottled drinking water – a further crisis in what is already an abnormally hot summer for Lima, home to some 10 million inhabitants.”

The Economist notes that the flooding may have far-reaching consequences for the Peruvian economy:

“But the flooding is just the latest problem in Mr [Pedro] Kuczynski’s [President of Peru] in-tray. Last year, the government had forecast growth of 4.8% for 2017. In January it cut that prediction to 3.8% as the scale of a scandal involving Odebrecht, a big Brazilian construction firm, became clear.

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