Natural Disasters

This year school has been cancelled for Swine Flu, Politics, World Cup qualification, and now Agatha. Agatha is a Tropical Stormed turned Tropical Depression and it slammed into El Salvador, Guatemala, Southern Mexico and Honduras. Guatemala has especially been hit. Click here for an article on CNN with a CRAZY picture from Guatemala.
What does Agatha mean to me? My experiences with Agatha have been the following. Friday afternoon 4 other teachers and myself went to the beach for the weekend. We slept outside on Friday night, with the protection of a canopy. As one of the teachers said, "We were like vegetables in the grocery store with the misters on all night." We didn't get soaked but everything was very damp! Saturday morning the sun did manage to peak out for a little while, but we decided we were done being misted vegetables so we went home that afternoon. Which was a very smart choice because Agatha came rolling in Saturday night. It just rained A LOT all day on Sunday. The past 10 days have been pretty wet so the rivers were already pretty high and then with the heavy rainfall on Sunday the rivers started to flood. Tegucigalpa is in a bowl. There are mountains on all sides which does not serve well for drainage of all this water. The rivers and streams that flow through the city have over taken roads and have washed away bridges. In Honduras 17 people have died, 11 bridges have washed away, 63 homes have been destroyed, around 3500 people have been evacuated and 3000 people around are in shelters. And there are countless roads, bridges, homes, schools, businesses that have been damaged.
The infrastructure of this country cannot handle natural disasters. One of the problems is sewage. Many of the sewage lines have been destroyed and well now it is just flowing with the water. Awesome huh?
God is watching out for us. The sun was out most of the day helping the waters to go down. However the waters are still raging. There are still many areas that are under water and the country is still under a National State of Emergency. The government has shut down all schools as many schools are being turned into shelters. We are thankful for the days of rest, but at the same time these days come at a cost for so many people. I think of the farmers whose fields are being destroyed. The markets that are under water, the business that have feet of water in the buildings. How long will it take for the people to recover?
Pray for the people. Pray that the sun will come out tomorrow too. Pray that the waters will go down. God will provide, he is so much greater and stronger than these raging waters.
Pray for Guatemala too. Thursday a volcano erupted. Just so happens to be the volcano that I climbed 2 months a go. The ash and debris from the eruption is clogging the drains making the flooding worse.