Dear Ben,
Thank you for your comments and interest (to Ilan also). I hope you are fine now, your deep thoughts (”crazy ideas”) and inquire are always necessary and welcome. Let me react quickly in two specific questions:
1) The special commission (CIATTS) did recommendation to the top federal officials in civil protection at the National System. It has been done both oral and documentary ways. In that Commission have been participating representantatives of National Disasters Prevention Center (Spanish acronym, CENAPRED), National Weather Service and Mexican Institute of Water Technology (Spanish acronym, IMTA), among scholars from other academic entities.
Although most Radixers colleagues are multilingual and since Spanish is the second language most spoken in all around the world, I offer this translation to my bad English of specific paragraph of that recommendation:
"Use of information available from United States of America’s meteorological services. This Commission recommend to Civil Protection General Coordination at the Ministry of Government (Interior Ministry), to explore condition to seek an agreement with correspondent in the USA in order to make possible direct access for local authorities to forecasts and tornado and severe storm warnings. Local authorities in border cities shall compromise to do not get omission for these services and to prepare responsible personnel to translate those warnings meanwhile a national warning system is developed.
About the specific case of Piedras Negras City, this Commission has considered very important and urgent that state and municipal government do a joint efforts in order to:
A) To Identify or build appropriate shelters in order to resist tornadoes. This measure is considered a necessity because many houses and other buildings in the area have not winds resistant structures.
B) To assess the existing flood “warning system” under control of Piedras Negras Disaster Prevention Municipal Center. This “warning system” has not reliable organization neither appropriate design.
C) To develop emergency plans considering tornadoes"
http://ciatts.ciesas.edu.mx/Documentos/Minutas/Minuta%20ComTornados_01_jun_2007.pdf
2) About your “crazy idea”-hypothesis: meteorological radars (and most kind of radars) are very sophisticated technology now. Perhaps meteorological radars are no the most appropriate resource for aircraft traffic detection, besides it is unthinkable that US government is out of control of that kind of traffic even in Mexican territory. The Mexican meteorological radar network do not ever have working at all. On another hand, there has been World Bank loans for Mexican NWS “modernization” but… any way the facts are at sight. I do suspect we have to build hypothesis on that direction.
I’m preparing case study of this subject, as Ilan have mentioned.
Un abrazo!!
Jesus Manuel
Thank you so very much, Jesus, for the excellent comment! As one of the editorial board members of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation, I echo Ilan's suggestion about a case study.
Several things jump out at me from your mail.
Firstly, I wonder what different history of meteorology in Cuba gave rise to the concern in that country with tornadoes. Just for your information, I am looping into this discussion my friend Enrique Castellanos, who is very knowledgeable about many aspects of the relations in Cuba among science, policy and disasters. It would be wonderful if you and he found it convenient at some time to work together on a comparative study of these issues in Mexico and Cuba!
Secondly, following up on your mention of the military history of radar, might I suggest an alternative hypothesis? Since radar was developed during the Second World War, it is old tech. Could the reason why its use in Mexico has not spread as widely as elsewhere have to do not with its military history but its more recent use in policing air borne drug trafficking? Radar is widely used to intercept small aircraft that deviate from flight plans or have no flight plans. Could it be that powerful interests in Mexico resisted the importation and deployment of radar, training of radar engineers, etc. as a way of weakening surveillance? (This is just an hypothesis -- fancy word for the sort of crazy idea that occurs to an old man who returned from hospital yesterday after a total knee replacement and who, as a result, has pain killing chemicals in his brain!).
Thirdly, returning to the original question about flooding along the Rio Grande, it would be interesting to study the mobile phone communication among residents up and downstream of the river n both banks. In a study hurricane warning during the 2004 season, colleagues and I found the family members from Dominican Republic who were resident in the US were in touch with loved ones in DR with hurricane watch/ warning information taken from the US TV 'Weather Channel', and these sources of information were more rapid that DR's official warnings that came from DR's met service via DR TV and radio. I wonder if anything like that was going on in the flood affected areas spanning US and Mexico.
Finally, could you please tell your companeros/as in the RADIX network what government did with your recommendation?
All the very best and thanks again for a very thought-provoking commentary!
Un abrazo, BEN-----Original Message-----
From: Ilan Kelman <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Jun 1, 2015 10:03 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Any Texas-Mexico disaster diplomacy?Dear Jesus (and Radix),Thank you so much for these detailed and useful insights. The problems you mention are unfortunate and frustrating, but your knowledge and analysis are important and wise, deserving a wider audience. If of interest to you, I hope that you would not mind two suggestions:1. I would be delighted if you would wish to write a short commentary for the disaster diplomacy website http://www.disasterdiplomacy.org You have excellent points on how cross-border disaster-related work should be conducted and the opportunities for that.2. Your material below looks perfect for a 4,000-word case study or policy briefing for the journal 'Disaster Prevention and Management' http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journal/dpm Your email below is more than 12% the way there already.Thank you again for sharing and hoping that we could use your thoughts more widely. With thanks and warmest regards,IlanTwitter @IlanKelman
From: Jesus M. Macias <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Sunday, May 31, 2015 2:59 AM
Subject: Re: [RADIX] Any Texas-Mexico disaster diplomacy?
Dear Ilan,Thank you for bring to us this issue. I have some things to comment to this wide Radix community. As we know, on past Monday May 25 a supercell tornado “surprisingly” hit several urban sectors in Ciudad Acuña, a border Mexican city and “tween-city” of Del Rio, Texas. It has been the most deadly tornado in our registers (started in 2000). More than 16 died and more than 190 injured.There are many subject to mention on this disastrous tornado occurrence, but what is so clear is exactly the same reasons we have shared in several publication and in this list. I feel more than authorized to speak about this subject just because I have made institutional observation and recommendation to top federal officials in Civil Protection organization. Let me tell you about some problems involved in this case.1) In Mexico there was a broad assumption about tornadoes are phenomena that do not exist in our territory and that this kind of terrible threat are just an US problem. I have found some similar problem in most Latin American countries, excepting Cuba, Argentina and Brazil (perhaps Colombia).2) What kind of explanation I have found for those problems?(a) Tornadoes obviously have always exist in Mexico (and I am sure in most countries around the world). With my colleagues in CIESAS-Mexico we have found enormous evidence in archeological, ethnohistorical and present sources. People in past and present have recognized tornados with other names as symbolic reference (religious metamorphosed expressions), so it means that tornadoes have been outsiders phenomena from science and then from government responsibility.(b) Why even meteorologist in Mexico thought that tornadoes cannot be presents in Mexico? Because the Mexican meteorology, either operational or academic, is just synoptic meteorology. Micro and mesoscale meteorology is almost nonexistent here. Why micro and mesoscale meteorology is not developed in Mexico? Well it has several answers; one is about the use of radar technology (remember first it was military technology), other is about government corruption; other is about short seeing in meteorology leaders in the academic field.3) In April 2007, there were a supercell tornado struck Piedras Negras city nearby Ciudad Acuña. At CIESAS we were the only one team of researchers working on disasters related to tornadoes in all around the country. Federal officials asked us for recommendations in order to reduce tornadoes impact.4) After a Special Commission was created (CIATTS: http://ciatts.ciesas.edu.mx/index.html) We delivered the next recommendations:- Urgently we encourage to Mexican government to make some agreement with American government in order to take advantage of radar network and all meteorological products that relies on all border area and covers all Mexican cities there.- This agreement would gave some time to facing tornadoes just meanwhile the Mexican government rapidly develops their own resources in meteorology (technological and scientific) and emergency preparedness among other stuff. We even explore the possibilities to develop meteorological radars technology.Of course, nothing happened and we denounced this through the media, below some examples:At the present federal administration (very well known in the international and national context for it corruption) things are worst not only in DDR related stuff but in economy, lost “drugs war”, generalized violence and so. I cannot ignore that American government has supported the Mexican President since elections in 2012, with arms, helicopters, military and police training, “intelligence”, etc., at least for have access to energy resources (among other things).Best!Jesus Manuel2015-05-26 2:04 GMT-05:00 Ilan Kelman <[log in to unmask]>:Major storms have hit the Texas-Mexico border http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-32877631 potentially adding to the Mexico/U.S.A. disaster diplomacy case study http://www.disasterdiplomacy.org/casestudies.html#mexicousa (and see also the last photo at http://www.ilankelman.org/tornadodamage.html ). Any comments or information regarding cross-border responses or assistance?IlanDr. Ben Wisner Aon-Benfield UCL Hazard Research Centre, University College London, UK & Sokoine University of Agriculture, Morogoro, Tanzania & Environmental Studies Program, Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH, USA "People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care."