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Hurricane Mitch, the second deadliest Atlantic hurricane in history, made landfall in Honduras on October 29, 1998. By the time it had made its way through Honduras, Nicaragua and Guatemala, over 11,000 were dead with a further 11,000 missing and 2.7 million left homeless. In this video, Carmen Pong, a water and sanitation expert who had spent most of her 20 year career working in Central America speaks about the devastation to the communities in which she was working. She recalls that Hurricane Mitch: “It caused a huge landslide, which buried two villages…. When I managed to get here, all you could see was mud. The only remaining sign of the two villages was the well we had built and its commemorative plaque.” She also speaks of the resiliency of the communities and the way that they honor those who were lost, saying: “But the people who told us about their tragedy and their grief really wanted to rebuild their lives. They had not lost heart and were not just looking for aid…. The survivors are protecting this place. They have planted one tree for each life lost.”
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