Flood Risk in Times of COVID-19, Peñón de los Baños, Venustiano Carranza, Mexico City, Mexico

Abstract

The borough of Venustiano Carranza has an area of 33.42 km² (8,258 acres), which is 2.24% of the total area of Mexico City. It is in the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt, in a land of 3,341 ha (8255.79 acres) where there are mainly lake deposits. To the north of the borough, there stands a structure of 2,290 m.a.s.l. which pertains to what is referred to as Peñón de los Baños. Since the COVID-19 pandemic got to Mexico in 2020, there was a general change throughout the country in the population behaviour regarding their daily life. However, an analysis should be made on how risk is understood in times of COVID-19 in towns where risk-related problems normally occur. For the perception analysis, the town Peñón de los Baños was used a sample. In this town, floods are recurring during the rainy season, and it is one of the towns that was most affected by the pandemic during the first wave (April and May 2020), as more than 100 individuals died in just 2 months. The purpose of this analysis is to know how the population perceives the flood risk and behaves in an emergency phase, in the midst of a pandemic that entails sanitary and social restrictions, i.e., how is the population facing both problems: material losses and fear of getting infected. Both problems put people’s lives at risk, but the results show the priorities and the response process in the emergency phase that is currently implemented by the population.