Learning from El Niño Costero 2017: Opportunities for Building Resilience in Peru / El Niño Costero: The Floods of 2017 in Peru

In January 2017, coastal waters off Peru warmed suddenly and unexpectedly. Low lying coastal storms dropped intense rainfall at low elevation, causing rivers, ephemeral streams, and low-lying areas to flood. Repeated episodes of rainfall, flooding, and landslides affected populations west of the Andes from Ica to the northern border of Peru. The flooding continued for nearly three months, affecting over 1.5 million people, causing 162 deaths, and damaging hundreds of thousands of homes. Critical infrastructure was also damaged, cutting off access to hundreds of villages and towns in desperate need of aid. This report synthesizes existing knowledge and analysis to tell the story of the 2017 floods from a resilience perspective, applying the unique PERC methodology to learn from disasters. It explores what happened, where disaster risk reduction (DRR) response and recovery have been most effective, and where there are opportunities to further build flood and multi-hazard resilience during and following reconstruction and recovery. This study focuses specifically on Piura in northern Peru, but general lessons applicable nationally and globally.