Latin America Chapter

On March 7th, Bahía Blanca and Cerri, Argentina were hit with over a year’s worth of rain in just eight hours. The heavy water quickly damaged roads, bridges, cars, housing, infrastructure, and the region. There have been 16 confirmed deaths, and still over 100 people missing.

In San Juan Alotenango, Guatemala the Fuego Volcano was slowly erupting, spewing ash and lahar across neighbourhoods. Hundreds of residents have been evacuated from surrounding regions, as well as multiple school and road closures, with tens of thousands more evacuations expected.

GEM Europe, in partnership with Goya Spain, is responding to the deadly flooding in Valencia, Spain. The floods have claimed the lives of dozens and caused severe destruction around the region. Already recorded as Spain’s worst disaster in the last 3 decades.

The GEM LATAM team responded in Rio Grande Do Sul, Brazil to the recent extreme flooding in April & May 2024 . Over 1 million homes were without access to water, tens of thousands of people have been evacuated and placed in shelters, and countless more have been affected.

In February 2024, Chile experienced their worst disaster in over a decade. Severe forest fires devastated the Valparaiso region, having burnt nearly 64,000 acres and forcing thousands to evacuate.

Acapulco, Mexico was devastated by a Category 5 hurricane on October 25th. The storms caused flooding, extreme structural damage, road destruction, affecting over 2 million people.

Hurricane Lisa intensified into the Caribbean waters, and made landfall in Belize in northern Guatemala. GEM responded immediately by deploying a team & sending containers.

On October 31, 2020, the category 4 hurricane ETA hit Central America devastating the region – reporting 57 dead & hundreds missing. On November 16, another Cat 5 hurricane, Iota ravaged the region.

In 2019, the Amazon wildfires season saw a surge in fires with more than 906,000 affected hectares occurring in the Amazon rainforest and Amazon biome within Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Peru.

In 2019, the Venezuelan migration and refugee crisis, the largest refugee crisis in the Americas, is the emigration of 4.6million Venezuelans who fled the country because of the Bolivarian Revolution.

On June 3, 2018, Volcán de Fuego eruption was a series of volcanic explosions and pyroclastic flows. The eruption included lahars and volcanic ash clouds with no evacuation time causing 200 deaths.