Costa Rica doesn’t get hurricanes but we do feel their effects… San Isidro and the general valley area are recovering from the secondary effects of hurricane Tomas.

It started raining throughout the San Isidro area on Sunday morning October 31st and literally did not stop until the next Saturday the 6th of November. With periods of very heavy down pours to light showers, this was the most intense storm to hit Perez Zeledon since the effects of Hurricane Cesar back in ’95.

San Isidro and the communities that make up the general valley are were well prepared this time. After Tropical Storm Alma 09, the Emergency & Disaster Repair branch of the Costa Rican government sent out tractors, excavators, dump trucks and their crews to open up the many rivers and move the huge amounts of material that had been building up over the years in the rivers.

The large islands of hundreds of metric tons of sand & gravel in the local rivers are what caused local rivers to leave their banks and produce heavy flooding during Tropical Storm Alma.

This time around with Hurricane Tomas we did not have the same problems with our major rivers as Tropical Storm Alma. San Isidro was only without electricity for a few hours and the local water systems stayed on for the most part in down town and the surrounding communities.

We did experience several mud slides from the very large to smaller ones that blocked local roads and cut off outlaying communities. Also smaller creeks in several of the outlying communities jumped there banks causing flooding and damage to homes that were built on the edges of these creeks. The Interamercana or Pan-American Highway was closed in several sectors going south out of San Isidro.

The Municipality of Perez Zeledon quickly got on the situation and had the Pan-American highway opened up to slow one lane travel in the affected areas from San Isidro to Buenos Aires within hours of the first slides. A major slide occurred that closed the Pan-American Highway in the area of Paso Real cutting off travel from Buenos Aires to Palmar Norte. But that slide has been cleaned up as of yesterday and you can now travel form San Isidro all the way through to Palmar Norte.

We received huge amounts of rain fall during the course of the storm. But due to the excellent work from the Emergency & Disaster Repair branch of the Costa Rican government as well as the Municipality of Perez Zeledon & MOPT, San Isidro was able to get through the storm with minimal damage.

So things are getting back to normal in San Isidro and the surrounding communities. The backhoes, excavators and dump trucks are still working around the clock cleaning up the slides and keeping the roads open so if you have planned a trip to San Isidro and the Valley General don’t change you dates we are ready for you. Our roads are back open to travel and things in the valley are getting back to normal.

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