El Salvador washes away...again

The tiny & impoverished country of El Salvador has been hard hit with the rians from Hurricane Ida. Flooding and mudslides have innundated many villages and destroyed roads. There have been 91 reported deaths so far.

I can remember going to Central America after Hurricane Mitch in January 1999. The capital city of Honduras (Tegucigalpa) was hit badly with a loss of 3-4 of it's major bridges demolished and thousands killed. It was a mess. I remember flying over the Honduras & El Salvadorean hills and seeing the badly denuded and eroded hills. Deforestation and poverty had taken a grim toll. When these hurricanes hit..the hills wash away the villages, very much like the Phillipines.

I once worked at a fibre mill where we could (and did) make wonderful erosion control products from waste wood fibre. The mill has closed due to the failing economics of our American neighbors to the south. We also made fibre board for construction. The mill has been disassembled now and vacant. Most of B.C.s northern interior pine forest is dying due to bug kill and needs to be harvested soon before the trees become useless for either timber or fibre. We are chopping it down to feed woodstoves now and provide energy. This is too bad..as our little mill could have provided large areas of the third world with woven erosion control blankets and mulch to begin regenerating their denuded hillsides. Well..I suppose Red Cross relief and foreign aid for miltary needs will always trump common sense, sustainable forest practices and sensible resource sharing every time. Sad.

below is an interesting video that shows some disgruntled workers addressing the closure of the plant

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeTrs1Qm0Tc

I've also included some pictures of mulch and erosion control fibre blankets much like our facility used to produce