UNISDR

Luz Maria Sanchez Hurtado: Retrofitting a school in Peru’s High Andes

The project implemented in the high Andean of Peru in the Chocos district reduced the disaster damage infrastructures among education facilities; it includes the process of resilience developing. The population learned about how they prevent disasters. The first step of work consisted in the sensitizing and training process related to land sanitation and disaster prevention issues the population focused as a principal problem to solve in the community.

The trained people learned about the importance to make the community risk mapping. During the walking in the community identified the vulnerability problems existent. It was an important step of the training that the trained people found out to advocate for solutions to the local and state authorities. The drawing of a risk mapping with all the problems found becomes a tool.

The project focused in the training (theory and practice). The training consisted in the retrofit of the school that suffered of cracks due to the earthquake of 2007 in Peru that represented a risk for the children. Women and men were trained and learned about how to improve the walls of the school using the mud brick units and the geomesh as reinforcement element in the seismic construction.

The children from the school were included in all the process of the project with the training process about how to make a safe construction using the geomesh on the walls as reinforcement element.  The training was important due to the children disseminate the safe construction in their homes and convince their parents to improve their homes to live safe. The retrofit of the school was a model to disseminate the seismic and resistant construction in the housing area and other buildings in the community and at the local level. 

The training consisted in the production of mud brick reinforced units to replace the adobes or mud bricks that presented cracks. Also the trained people learnt how to improve the old construction using a seismic and resistant construction technology. The San Cristobal de Chocos School finally was retrofitted and the children will be able to study in safe conditions.  

After the training finished the people elected a management committee to advocate the state and local authorities for their rights. The organization of a public event (community strategy) was approved by the trained people and invited the Mayors of Chocos and the districts around, the Housing Ministry representatives, the Lima Region Provinces officials, the population, the students of Stanford University from USA, The students of the Catholic University, the Geo Hazards International representatives, Estrategia NGO representatives from Peru.

The population got important results after the public event and the project finished. The population from Chocos with the supporting of the Housing Ministry got the land titling from the state organization, Cofopri, The Mayor of the Chocos Municipality approved the land sanitation of the community and also approved a Municipal Orderly to allow the population to demolish the collapsed buildings. The Mayor of Chocos after get trained started to organize a group of 5 Mayors from districts located around Chocos district to demand the Lima Provinces Region for the construction of the main road and they got this supporting. This project was presented in the Parliament (Housing Committee) as a successful program to disseminate at the national level.

Luz Maria Sanchez Hurtado  is General Director of the NGO Estrategia, and an  advocate for UNISDR’s Making Cities Resilient campaign.     Photos are courtesy of Geo Hazards International, San Francisco, USA.