Hurricanes Fay, Gustav, Hannah and Ike swamp Gonaives in Haiti
 |
Event
In August, hurricanes Fay, Gustav and Hannah battered the Caribbean islands, flooding Gonaives, Haiti’s third largest city. The flood waters were just starting to recede in certain districts when Hurricane Ike brought more destructive flooding on the night of September 6 & 7.
Many homes were swept away and the rice, fruit and grain crops were destroyed in a country already badly hit by the food crisis.
|
|
Need
To reach the population of Gonaives, civil protection and humanitarian relief logistics teams needed to obtain maps rapidly to identify disaster areas.
|
|
Solution
Two SPOT satellite images were delivered after activation of the International Charter on Space and Major Disasters: a SPOT 5 archive image of 9 July 2007 and a SPOT 4 image acquired 8 September 2008.
|
|
Results
Rapid mapping of disaster areas provided vital information for organizing logistics. The example here shows how flooded urban areas were identified from satellite imagery of the city of Gonaives.
|
|
Urban flood extent map
In the archive image, the city boundaries of Gonaives are outlined in mauve. In the recently acquired image, standing flood waters are in blue and run-off waters that appear light green in the image are colored yellow.
The city boundaries are overlaid on the map. Combining these three layers of information highlights the extent of flooding in urban areas.
|
