Humanitarian and Development
- Location:
Ecuador - Date:
April 2016 - Types of support:
Water
Technical assessment
Installation of emergency equipment
Post-crisis evaluation
Technical assessment
Operational support
The earthquake hit Ecuador’s Pacific coast and was the worst earthquake in Latin America since the 2010 Haiti quake. According to the country’s geological institute, over 70 aftershocks were recorded, particularly on Thursday 21 and Friday 22 April.
The first teams set off on 23 April
Three engineers from the Veolia Foundation travelled to Ecuador alongside 30 military personnel for civil security sent by the French government, just a few days after the earthquake. On 23 April, a plane carried 21 tonnes of equipment for producing and distributing drinking water to the communities hit by the earthquake. In Ecuador, Interagua, the Veolia Group’s local subsidiary, got its teams to utilize their expertise to help repair and manage the affected networks and plants as part of the country’s emergency response.
Aquaforce 500 and 5000 systems deployed
Senagua, the national water company, asked our volunteers to deploy two Aquaforce 500s and an Aquaforce 5000 in Calceta, six hours by road from Guayaquil in Manabi Province. The Interagua staff and the French volunteers took it in turns to ensure service continuity.
Response facts and figures
50 Interagua volunteers
5 Veoliaforce experts
41 days of work (27 March to 31 April)
An Aquaforce 5000 system designed to supply water to 5,000 people was installed in Chone where Foundation engineers and volunteers took over from the French military civil security personnel.
An initiative run in partnership with Interagua
The Interagua teams operated the mobile treatment units throughout the month of May before dismantling them, with the local authorities’ agreement, once the emergency situation was over and life got back to normal. The Foundation left the equipment in Interagua’s Guayaquil warehouses in order to create a contingency stock to plan ahead for and bolster the future response to the natural disasters which South America regularly experiences. A new week of deployment exercises will be arranged by the Foundation with the support of Interagua in 2017 to consolidate the knowledge acquired and train new volunteers from both Interagua and other Veolia organizations in the area.
Read about our news :
Earthquake in Ecuador: the Veolia Foundation is rallying round to supply water to the disaster victims
France responded to the request for international assistance made by Ecuador to the EU and focused its response on water treatment. The Veolia Foundation made available its experts as well as several water treatment units as part of its partnership with the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Development’s crisis and support centre, having also been requested to help by Interagua.
In 2009, a Veoliaforce training course taught an Interagua team how to set up Aquaforce systems. Several of the staff who underwent training took part in the work done in April 2016 and the Foundation’s engineers also trained a further 20 Interagua volunteers.
In 2009, the Veolia Foundation decided to store several Aquaforce type mobile water treatment units in Ecuador. This stock of equipment was put in place to reduce response time and was brought together and added to following the work done by the Foundation’s teams.