On 19 May 2014, volunteers from the non-profit crowdsource mapping group MapAction were deployed to Belgrade in response to the severe flooding in Serbia and the Balkans.
In what is being hailed as the worst flood in 120 years reports have indicated that four months worth of rain has fallen in a single day. The flooding caused by excess rain combined with landslides and damage to infrastructure is estimated to have affected over 50,000 people.
A MapAction team is responding to widespread and repeated flooding in western Paraguay attached to a United Nations’ assistance group. The worst floods for more than a decade began in April. They have left thousands of families in scattered rural communities in urgent need of emergency food and other help after the floods devastated crops and livestock. A complication of the emergency is that the affected communities are spread across two rural departments with a combined area somewhat larger than England and Wales.
Traditional helpers in disaster relief, such as the U.N. and world governments, provided aid after a massive earthquake devastated Haiti in January 2010, leveled Port-au-Prince, claimed 230,000 lives and caused US$14 billion in damages.
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