El Salvador: Landslide
Landslide
How the score is calculated
The score starts at 8. It adds points from recorded affected, deaths, displaced and casualty counts, plus terms found in the story title, event type or status. For each count, only its highest matching band is used.
- Affected people
- 1–999: +5 · 1,000–9,999: +12 · 10,000–99,999: +20 · 100,000–999,999: +28 · 1 million+: +35
- Deaths
- 1–9: +8 · 10–99: +14 · 100–999: +22 · 1,000+: +30
- Displaced people
- 1–9,999: +6 · 10,000–99,999: +12 · 100,000+: +18
- Casualties
- 100 or more: +8
- Story wording
- +10 for terms such as catastrophe, famine, war, conflict, major earthquake, mass casualty or critical. Otherwise, +5 for active, ongoing, emergency, outbreak, cyclone or hurricane.
Score bands: Watch 0–24 · Moderate 25–49 · High 50–74 · Critical 75–100. Scores are capped at 100. Missing or unparseable figures add no points.
This is a rule-based WorldsAid triage indicator, not an official or independently validated classification. It does not account for recency or local context, and it can understate events with incomplete reporting. Check the linked sources.
Historical record
Status: CLOSED · Imported 2026-10-07
Closed for this historical import at the site owner’s request; not a new assessment of current conditions.
In brief
- What happenedOn October 29, the Environmental Observatory reported a very high probability (80% -100%) of the occurrence of landslides and debris flows in Cerro El Picacho, Boquerón and neighboring municipalities (north of Santa Tecla, San Salvador, Mejicanos and Nejapa).
- How many affectedDeaths: 7
- What help is neededThe slide occurred Thursday night when earth from the upper part of the San Salvador volcano was set in motion, sweeping up trees and homes. (AP Photo/Salvador Melendez) The National Civil Protection System was activated to carry out search, recovery, rescue and assistance to the affected communities.
What changed
First retained snapshot
No earlier verified snapshot is present in the recovered dataset. This record remains available as the historical baseline.
Situation
On October 29, the Environmental Observatory reported a very high probability (80% -100%) of the occurrence of landslides and debris flows in Cerro El Picacho, Boquerón and neighboring municipalities (north of Santa Tecla, San Salvador, Mejicanos and Nejapa). At approximately 11:00 p.m., a large-scale landslide occurred from Cerro El Picacho with an approximate distance of 4 km of mud, rocks, logs and other debris that impacted Caserío Angelitos 1 and 2 of the municipality of Nejapa, San Salvador. Photo: The Canadian Press A rescue worker stands by as locals watch from the trunk of a tree that fell during a deadly landslide in Nejapa, El Salvador, Friday, Oct. 30, 2020. The slide occurred Thursday night when earth from the upper part of the San Salvador volcano was set in motion, sweeping up trees and homes. (AP Photo/Salvador Melendez) The National Civil Protection System was activated to carry out search, recovery, rescue and assistance to the affected communities. On the morning of October 30, a Red Alert was declared in the municipality of Nejapa and particularly in the affected areas. The priority actions of the General Directorate of Civil Protection (DGPC) and the Ministry of the Interior and Territorial Development (MIGOBDT) are focused on the search and rescue of people, shelter management, debris evacuation and damage assessment. Through the first DGPC situation report, shared at 11:00 am on October 30, 105 affected families, 35 missing persons, 6 hospitalized persons and 7 deceased persons were reported. According to the report, the institutions collaborating in search, rescue and debris removal operations are: Green Cross, Red Cross, Rescue Commands, National Civil Police, Order Maintenance Unit, Deputy Minister of Transport, Civil Protection of Nejapa, Attorney General of the Republic, Institute of Legal Medicine, Armed Forces of El Salvador and DGPC, adding a total of 483 human resources. ( OCHA, 30 Oct 2020 )
Linked charities and agencies
WorldsAid verification
A WorldsAid editor reviewed this record against 1 attributed source, cleaned feed formatting and checked the crisis, place and reporting date. 1 human-impact figure was separated from the narrative and dated where the source allowed. Earlier observations remain in the evidence history instead of being silently overwritten.
Verified figures
- Deaths
- 7 retained at 2020-11-03
What we knew when
- WorldsAid record entered the retained historical dataset.
- Last verification represented by this immutable snapshot.
Earlier figures are never replaced by later values; additional observations are retained as new ledger entries.
Provenance
This page renders the last verified WorldsAid cache directly in HTML. It does not treat generated summaries as primary evidence.
Cached dataset: worldsai_drup771.sql.gz
Verified
SHA-256 258b055d07f719aee97d40bb932a7d7050a8c431644c70d5368f1dfc50970f5a