If you live in Sarapiquí, Guápiles, Siquirres or the South Caribbean, today is not going to be a normal Friday. Schools are closed. Route 4 was cut through Sarapiquí. Hundreds of your neighbors slept in shelters. And the ground under all of it is holding about as much water as it can hold.
The Comisión Nacional de Emergencias (CNE) counted 800 people evacuated into nine shelters by late yesterday afternoon, according to CNE president Alejandro Picado. That figure is a running total of everyone pulled out of harm’s way, not a snapshot of who was still sheltered by nightfall.
Counts released earlier in the day ran lower and measured something different — more than 500 people in shelters at one point Thursday, and 348 people across six shelters in another CNE tally. The numbers move by the hour as families go home and new evacuations begin, so treat any single figure as a photograph rather than a measurement.
Picado named Sarapiquí as the hardest-hit canton. The communities sending the most people out are Naranjal 1, Naranjal 2, Carretones, Mortero, La Chave, El Palmar, Cureña and Cureñita. Firefighters and Red Cross crews used rafts and small boats to reach houses in El Tigre, Naranjales and El Nogal, where water covered the streets. The CNE delivered 1,250 food parcels and was arranging another 1,000, along with drinking water for households cut off from safe supply.
Your children are probably not in class today and depending on where you live that may have changed after you went to bed. The Ministerio de Educación Pública first suspended lessons Thursday and Friday at 157 schools — 138 in the Sarapiquí regional directorate, 14 in Guápiles and five in Siquirres, under the Limón directorate.
Late last night the ministry extended the suspension to all 110 schools in the Sulá regional directorate, which covers the South Caribbean. That brings the national total to 267 campuses closed. If your kids attend school anywhere between Bribri, Cahuita and Puerto Viejo de Talamanca, check the ministry’s official channels this morning rather than assuming yesterday’s list still applies.
The thing worth understanding today is why ordinary rain is now doing extraordinary damage. The Instituto Meteorológico Nacional reported Thursday that river basins across the Caribbean, the Northern Zone and the South Pacific are sitting near 95 percent saturation. Soil that full behaves like a paved parking lot.
Rain that would normally soak in instead runs straight off the hillside and into the nearest quebrada, which is why a moderate afternoon downpour can now push a river over its banks in under an hour. The IMN measured 20 to 50 millimeters (0.8 to 2 inches) of rain Thursday morning alone, with peaks of 60 to 85 millimeters (2.4 to 3.3 inches) around Horquetas, Sarapiquí, Montaña Sagrada, Pococí and Cariari. Overnight Wednesday into Thursday, Canta Gallo de Limón took 81.8 millimeters (3.2 inches) and Sarapiquí 44.2 millimeters (1.7 inches).
There is a second, less obvious risk on the Río Sarapiquí. Emergency crews spent yesterday verifying whether a landslide has formed a plug in the river channel. A plug like that acts as an accidental dam. It holds water back, the level builds behind it, and then it fails all at once — sending a surge downstream with almost no warning to anyone below it. That is the specific scenario the CNE is watching, and it is the reason to take an evacuation instruction seriously even if the river in front of your house looks calm at the moment you receive it.
Roads are the other daily problem. Route 4 was blocked in Sarapiquí on Thursday, and Route 32 over the Zurquí has closed repeatedly this month when material comes down on the carriageway. Confirm the status with the MOPT before you commit to a drive, because the alternates are slower than they look on a map: Vara Blanca handles light vehicles only, and Bajos de Chilamate–Vuelta Kooper takes any vehicle but adds real time. If you reach standing water on a road, turn around. You cannot see whether the roadbed underneath has washed out, and moving water pushes a vehicle sideways long before the water reaches the door.
Travelers should build slack into today. The overland route to Tortuguero runs Guápiles to Cariari to the La Pavona dock, straight through the affected corridor, and the same weather that closed schools can close a boat schedule. Lodges in Sarapiquí, La Selva and the Puerto Viejo de Sarapiquí area are inside the flood footprint. Call ahead rather than driving out and finding out. In Talamanca, rising rivers damaged dikes, roads and homes, and the CNE delivered aid to 50 fishing families in Puerto Viejo, Punta Uva and Manzanillo who could not get out on the water.
The forecast offers a partial break and then takes it back. The IMN expects a warmer, brighter morning as cloud cover thins, but an active Intertropical Convergence Zone and a hit of humidity moving in off the Caribbean should rebuild rain through the afternoon and into the night.
The North Caribbean starts cloudy with drizzle and intermittent rain and keeps a chance of showers all day, with Guápiles between 22.4 and 28 degrees Celsius (72 to 82 Fahrenheit). The South Caribbean follows the same pattern. Do not read a dry morning as the end of this. The IMN expects tropical wave No. 25 to reach the country on Sunday, landing on ground that will have had no time to drain.
The yellow alert stands for the Northern Zone, the north and south Caribbean, and the canton of Turrialba. If you are in those areas, keep your phone charged, keep documents and medication somewhere you can grab in one motion, and go when the municipal emergency committee tells you to go. Emergencies go to 9-1-1.
