Dominica

Between December 24 and 25, 2013, the eastern Caribbean islands of Dominica, Saint Lucia and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines were affected by torrential rains which triggered massive flooding and local landslides. The Associated Press reported that on the three islands, there were some 20 casualties. The Prime Ministers of those countries declared the state of national disaster, and even the head of the Organization of American States gave a statement on the tragedy.

In response to requests coming from the affected countries, and in the context of CATHALAC's role as a UN-SPIDER Regional Support Office in the region, CATHALAC's Division of Applied Research and Development prepared an analysis of the events triggering the disaster. The analysis was based on satellite-derived estimates of rainfall, principally from NOAA's Satellite and Information Service (NESDIS), and climatology data from the WorldClim 1.4 database. The results of the analysis showed that a…

In the early morning of July 28, 2011, Dominica's Matthieu Dam was breached, damaging infrastructure downstream in the Layou River valley. In the context of the ongoing Caribbean Satellite Disaster Pilot, an initiative involving a host of entities including the Caribbean Disaster & Emergency Management Agency, CATHALAC, NASA, UN-SPIDER, and others, recently completed an assessment of the Matthieu Dam collapse. That assessment indicates that the collapse of the Matthieu Dam reduced the Miracle Lake's surface by some ~8.25 hectares, and as evident in the July 31, 2011 imagery, the banks of the Layou River below the Dam were also breached, putting an additional 4.58 hectares of land under water.

Please follow the link to the original article for a situation report on the Matthieu Dam's collapse.