by Rod Hughes

Tropical Storm Alma caused extensive flooding and damage to roads and bridges throughout the country and caught the country unprepared. Usually, tropical weather disturbances such as hurricanes develop in the Caribbean and their low pressure troughs draw in wet air from the Pacific that dumps torrential rains on the country.

But, for the first time in history, weathermen say, this storm developed some 50 kilometers off Costa Rica’s Pacific coast. La Nacion reporter Francisco Angulo called Alma “the first made-in-Costa-Rica tropical storm.” It hit the Guanacaste coastline as a clockwise rotating mass of clouds, rain and lightning.

About 9 a.m. yesterday, the National Hurricane Center in Miami raised the tropical depression to the level of the first tropical storm of the year. Nor did it move to the north as Pacific storms often do but to the northeast. Such tropical storms do develop in the Pacific during this time of year but usually strike land farther north at, for instance, the Pacific coast of Mexico.

National weather experts expect strong winds in the northern and central Pacific areas and more rains in the mountains, not discounting the possibility of tornados. But so far no deaths have been reported but material damages from the rains are heavy, reports the National Emergency Committee. Hardest hit was the village of Parrita in Puntarenas province where the streets were turned into swift rivers and 900 persons fled to shelters.

Alma closed the coastal highway in the area and knocked out cell phone and electrical service. Even then, Parrita area homeless were pursued by the storm which caused the collapse of four temporary shelters and the movement of flooding victims to a fifth, a large Evangelical church.

Roads throughout wide areas were closed by 11 landslides. Six bridges in the San Ramon area were damaged. Whole sections of Parrita and its environs were isolated.

by Rod Hughes

We´ll put you out of your misery of suspense quickly. Yesterday’s soccer match between Saprissa and Alajuela to decide the national championship for this season fell victim to the same long, constant rains that turned the village of Parrita into an expensive river yesterday.

It will be played Sunday after the tropical storm has passed over and the natural turf at Morera Soto Stadium in Alajuela has had a chance to dry out. FEDFUT officials, the two coaches and the assigned field officials all trod the gay blades speculatively yesterday but it was clear that the underpinnings were just too soggy.

The fieldkeepers had covered the turf with large expanses of heavy duty plastic for two days in an attempt to encourage persistent downpours off the lush green but all to no avail. Usually in the rainy season, the precipitation ceases for periods to uncover the gress and let it dry but that did not happen this time.

But not only did Tropical Storm Alma postpone the game but it caused discord between the two clubs. At about 9 a.m., Alajuela’s club general manager Jorge Araneda inspected the pitch and pronounced it soft but not puddling. He spoke too soon. An hour later officials braved the downpour and trod the same pitch among the flooded out earthworms, led by referee Walter Quesada, and opined that it was playable and that they had seen worse. That left it up to the two clubs.

Araneda wanted to postpone the match, but Saprissa general manager Mariano Varela wanted the show to go on. The Alajuela reasoned that with a good part of the country under red alert due to the storms that playing at midday made no sense. Finally, the quartet of field officials broke the deadlock. By doing so, they probably avoided drastically reduced attendance and some fans having to catch a passing gondola to get home because the streets were flooded.

by Rod Hughes

Ever wonder why it takes so long to build or rebuild roads and streets in Costa Rica? A report in the daily La Nacion reveals the reasons: inter-agency confusion.

Sometimes, the paper says, the Ministry of Public Works (MOPT) contractors have to wait up to 18 months for the water service (A y A) and the electrical services ICE and National Power and Light, to relocate utilities. The delays are expensive for the government, as well as snarling traffic, because MOPT must pay construction companies penalties for overrunning the length of their contracts. Among the changes that state agencies lag behind in completing before the asphalt or concrete can be poured are moving and re-installing light posts, sewers, electric cables and phone lines.

Example: The 2.5 kilometer stretch of street between the San Jose suburbs of Sand Francisco and La Colina began eight months ago but is still a gravel surface while constructors wait for A y A to install storm sewers. The current rainstorms can’t be doing the unfinished street any good and, indeed, it was originally to be completed this month, before the rains. A y A is also responsible for the non-completion of 1.2 kilometers between San Francisco and Zapote, even though 18 months have passed since construction began.

But not all errors happen because of utility company inefficiency. Take the reconstructed street built between Cartago and Paraiso. After waiting a long time for that street to be repaired, residents in houses on both sides of the street found that they must construct ramps to get their cars out of their garages. Reason: The new street level is much higher than that of the old, potholed thoroughfare. A spokesman for the MECO construction firm shrugs, “That’s the way the MOPT engineers designed it.”

If birds suffered from the same lack of coordination, none of them could fly…

May 29, 2008

Winter is here! The rainy season has started. I thought winter and summer was determined by the months. I thought it was the same all over the northern hemisphere. But here, in Costa Rica, summer is the hot, sunny season, which just happens to come between the end of November, and the end of April. The children even get their summer holidays during this time period..
This year the rainy season came late, and it started slowly, so my best estimate would be May 18, which is very late. It caught up quickly, though. This past Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, brought half the normal rainfall for the month of May. And yesterday was incredible. I think we might have gotten the other half. Jose and I went up to Las Juntas to buy the lumber for the desk we are building. It had rained hard all morning, and I had gotten wet tying the lumber on the roof racks.
We stopped at the Jupris Restaurant in Lourdes, recommended by the ten trucks always parked outside, and verified as good food by myself many times over. Most bars and restaurants here have no walls, except for the kitchen area. We sat near the entrance, so Peaches could easily see me from the car. Just about then, the wind picked up, and we were getting soaked. We moved to a table near the centre, but the wind actually felt cold on my wet shirt, and in ten minutes I had to move to the other end of the table because the wind was blowing the rain right in. I was cold, and the cold beer didn’t help much either. By the time we got in the car, I put the heater on.
When we got home we unloaded the material, got soaked again, and took a long lunch to change clothes and have a shower. The rest of the day went well. We made a couple of sawhorses from lumber the mill gave us, and cut the first big piece of Guanacaste to shape. We got most of the big marks out with the coarse sanding disc for the grinder, and today will work with the finer discs to finish it up.
Back to the rain. The rain has continued unabated for more than twenty four hours now. The wind is almost continuous with high gusts frequent. Last night, I slept in my long pants and t-shirt, and still woke up cold at 3 a.m. I suppose we’ll get some of the inside work done this week, and wait for the inevitable nice weather to return, I hope, by next week.

by Rod Hughes

Exports of root crops to the United States, such as manioc root (yuca) destined for ethnic Latin consumption, are encountering problems of uncertain quality and volatile prices at their destination, according to the National Production Council. Some pumpkin types of crops also are experiencing the same woes.

The quality problem is blamed on a lack of organization on the part of farmers, some of whom are tilling small family plots. In some cases, areas that normally produce such crops are being diverted to the more lucrative pineapple. But one aspect is chronic: lack of modernization of traditional farming methods, says the council.

Costa Rica has been the principal supplier of tuber crops for Hispanic consumption for a long time. Some 90% of the starchy root used in the U.S. is grown here, mostly on small plots using rustic methods, although larger farmers have noted the profits in the crop and have brought some mechanization to the field.

In 2007, this country exported more than $61 million in root crops and another $2.4 million in the tropical ayote vegetable, a vine crop. But not all the farmers’ headaches are of their own making. Of late the market is suffering wild price fluctuations. The price for a 40 lbs. box of yuca has risen from $9 to $12 and soared to $29, drawing Nicaragua and Ecuador into the market as competitors. A larger supply may cause a disastrous drop in price.

The Miami office of the National Production Council warns that lower Costa Rican production caused the price rise as well, often failing to fulfill standing orders. Experts added that the shift to pineapple production may be counterproductive. That market will probably be saturated soon, says Costa Rican agricultural experts in Miami.

Competition is getting fierce. Panama, for example, has entered the ayote market, ironically using advanced techniques developed in Costa Rica to produce higher quality but often ignored by the small Tico farmer. Ginger, a non-traditional crop shipped from here in small quantities, is also finding a competitor in the U.S. market: Taiwan is now edging past this country as a supplier of the spice.

by Rod Hughes

The mini-drought that brought such grief to the northern section of the country ended last week with long soaking rains. In just three days, Friday through Sunday, leaden skies dumped half the average precipitation for May and more rains continued in the first three days of this week.

But for great areas of the northern sector, the damage had already been done in the form of dry wells, failed crops and dried up pastures that resulted in the deaths of some 300 cattle. The rains started early in April, leading some farmers to plant early, betting on the heavy rains predicted for this year. But the few days of rain stopped abruptly and early May was unseasonably dry.

The pastures will return slowly but the Ministry of Agriculture promised aid to cattle ranchers in the form of dry fodder until the those grazing areas are long enough to provide sustenance. Sheep can eat short grass because of their razor sharp incisors but cows munch grass by wrapping their tongues around the blades and jerking their heads.

The rising water table will also fill the wells. The national water and sewer system, A y A in the Spanish acronym, was forced to send tankers full of potable water to some rural communities.

The rain in Spain may fall mainly on the plain, according to the old English pronunciation exercise, but in Costa Rica, it falls mainly in the mountains. Precipitation in San Jose during the month was 137 liters per square meter, far below the 225.9 average for the past nine years for May. During the first two weeks of the month hardly a drop fell in most areas of the Central Valley.

Weatherman Juan Diego Naranjo told the daily La Nacion yesterday that a tropical storm is passing over the country and will probably bring even more rains into tomorrow. Most areas of the Central Valley received rain off and on last night and this morning. Although steady, the rains have largely been gentler than the violent tropical cloudbursts that often assault the metropolitan area. Still, cautions Naranjo, the ground is now saturated and people living in low-lying areas should watch the level of nearby rivers.

<strong>by Rod Hughes</strong>

A series of sharp tremors shook up southern Costa Rica near the Panama border yesterday, causing no reported deaths and only minor injuries but damaging roads and 17 homes. The epicenter if the quakes was in the Pacific Ocean and registered from 6 to 4.6 on the Richter scale.

The strongest of the tremors hit shortly after 9 a.m. yesterday. In the town of Corredores, the roof of the school came down. Between that hour and 10:30, another three sharp aftershocks jarred residents. Golfito and Puerto Jimenez also felt the quake, the epicenter of which was 30 kilometers south of Corredores in an active undersea fault.

In Rio Incendio, Elisabeth Gomez luckily escaped with bruises when part of her home fell on her. In a nearby home, the roof fell on a gas cylinder in the kitchen, setting fire to the ruins. The hospital at Ciudad Neily chose not to receive regular patients and kept open only the emergency room.

by Rod Hughes

After a scorched earth retreat of months against determined opposition from almost all the sports federations that wanted him gone since last November, Jorge Nery Carvajal resigned as head of the National Olympic Committee. By stepping down, he ended 22 years of association with the supreme amateur sports organization in the country.

The power struggle bid well to become the soap opera of the year and threatened to assure that no Costa Rican could get anything but private financing to journey to the Peking Olympic Games in August. Currently five athletes have qualified to go. At the end, the PanAmerican Sports Organization engineered the resignation in a special board session.

Carvajal admitted that he resigned only to avoid having the PanAmerican sports group sanction the national committee. In his last days, not a single sports federation would publicly come to his defense. The majority of federations openly criticized his allegedly high-handed administration in which he named to hierarchy of the committee. Then, at a recent meeting, he abruptly terminated a regular board meeting after negotiations with the opposition broke down.

His principal opponent, Henry Nunez, refrained from running for committee chairman to facilitate Carvajal’s exit, according to the daily La Nacion. Roberto Verdesia, by a vote of 31-9, will be chairman until September (after the summer Olympics) when a more stable group of officers will be elected. Other officials are secretary Martin Faba (bowling), treasurer Alexander Zamora (pingpong), while other officials represent swimming, horsemanship and wrestling.

by Rod Hughes

In a perfect example of the right hand not knowing the doings of the left one, the national power and light company (CNFL) invested $4 million to buy land for the construction of a dam ruled not feasible by its parent company, the Costa ican Electrical Institute (ICE), the daily paper La Nacion revealed today.

ICE pulled the plug on the dam project 18 kilometers north of San Ramon but not before CNFL’s investment. ICE is the power and light company’s principal stockholder. Since 2003, CNFL had been urging the construction of the dam, to be roughly the size of the currently existing 132 megawatt producing Cachi reservoir, which produces enough power for 100,000 homes.

The completed Balsa Superior project was to have cost about $300 million and to have had 25 kilometers of expensive tunnels. The dam at Pirris near Turrialba, by contrast, has only 10.5 kilometers of tunnels but produces the same megawattage as Balsa Superior was to have generated. Said Pedro Pablo Quiros, ICE’s CEO, where so many tunnels are needed, it means there is less water available.

Yet, the project would have collected water from six rivers and CNFL engineering estimates optimisticly put the reservoir size at equal to Cachi. Quiros summed up the possible lack of generating flow this way: “It was sensible to stop something that lacks reasonable viability from the risk analysis point of view. This was the conclusion without blame nor glory.”

Quiros said that CNFL would have to sell the property so that it would not be (pardon the expression) money down the drain. “These projects are so expensive,” he added, “that $4 million must not be an excuse to say, ‘better we go ahead (with it.)’”

<strong>by Rod Hughes</strong>

Motorists! Have a mechanic check out your engines often. Last year, 362 light vehicles, 84 trucks, 94 pickups, 32 heavy buses and 38 minibuses plus 25 pieces of equipment burned at roadside. And the average this year is 57 per month, according to studies by the National Insurance Institute.

Engine fires on buses are the most spectacular. The afternoon of March 1, 60 passengers of a Quepos-San Jose bus would up unhurt but stranded as they watched their transport burn at the edge of the highway. Four months earlier, reported the daily <em>La Nacion,</em> another 60 passengers had to scramble to safety as their bus headed north on the InterAmerican Highway was reduced to a burned out shell.

Hector Chaves of the National Fire Dept. (Bomberos in Spanish) cautioned, "People should understand that cars burn because of maintenance problems. They don’t explode like they do in movies." The two main causes, he told <em>La Nacion,</em> are electric shorts and fuel leaks but expressed his frustration at seeing increasing incidents of this type. "In 25 years of service," said the fireman, "I’ve never witnessed anything like this."

Usually the loss is confined to the material–but not always. Chaves remembers when Cecilia Khistina Rosenkvist, a Swedish lady, was trapped in her Isuzu Rodeo on the Prospero Fernandez Highway when the vehicle flipped and burned in March, 2006. Or the case of Jim Medrano who burned to death in his Jaguar after crashing into the divider and a post on the same highway in March of 2007.

<em><strong>What should you do in case of fire?</strong></em>

In case of electrical fires, disconnect the offending wiring. First and foremost is of course to turn off the ignition. If the insulation is burning your most effective weapon is an extinguisher that smothers the flames, most with CO2 vapor. If you want to consult experts about the best and most effective, drop by your nearest fire station. But check it for pressure every six months. In countless cases, motorists have stopped to aid the victim of a car fire only to find that their extinguishers were useless.

In case of a small fuel leak, an extinguisher can be effective. Do not use water; flaming gasoline can float on water, extending the fire. Of all things, pouring dust on a fuel fire can be effective. If you are in motion, choose a space away from parked cars, stop and get out immediately. But do not linger to save the car–remember that a gasoline fire advances five meters per second. (That’s one thing movies do not exaggerate.)