On April 1, 2017 landslides plowed through the city of Mocoa in southwestern Colombia. Torrential rains caused flooding and surging rivers leading to widespread damage to affected communities. A large part of the city was destroyed, and there was a serious risk of additional landslides.
The landslides disrupted water supplies, health services, roads, bridges, electricity, and telecommunications infrastructure. GlobalMedic’s RescUAV team was deployed to help provide critical support information to responders and recovery agencies.
5,000 PEOPLE DISPLACED
300+ PEOPLE KILLED
45,000 PEOPLE AFFECTED
4 trained members of GlobalMedic’s RescUAV team and 3 UAVs were deployed to Mocoa to respond. The team supported humanitarian actors by capturing imagery and mapping the landslides, affected communities and surging rivers.
During this mission over 2,000,000 m2 of the affected area was mapped, high definition video of more than 600,000 m2 of land was captured, and a search operation was conducted to locate a missing child.
