Ecuador Urges Precautions as Heavy Rain and High Tide Coincide

Ecuador’s National Emergency Operations Committee urged residents to take extra precautions on the evening of November 4 as forecasts pointed to strong overnight rain and an early-morning high tide. The committee cited the national meteorological institute, INAMHI, as forecasting rain that would ease toward dawn on November 5. “We call on the public to take extra precautions,” the committee said. It also cited the Oceanographic and Antarctic Institute of the Navy, INOCAR, as forecasting a high-tide peak at 03:46 local time on November 5. The warning concerned the combination of those forecast conditions. The alert came amid an extended period of rain-related emergencies. A National Secretariat for Risk Management situation report, covering events from August 29 through 18:00 on November 4, recorded 1,142 adverse events across Ecuador’s 24 provinces. Those included 644 floods and 214 landslides. The report listed 12 deaths and 4 injuries, alongside 12,793 homes affected and 38 destroyed. At that reporting cutoff, officials were monitoring 26 overflowing water bodies and another 36 with rising levels. The secretariat reported delivery of 21,772 humanitarian assistance items across 17 provinces. The national emergency committee remained active to coordinate monitoring and the response among public institutions. Those cumulative figures describe the situation before the latest overnight warning, rather than damage attributed to the forecast high tide.