Peru declares state of emergency in 893 districts as El Nino risk climbs to 62%

Peru's government has declared a 60-day state of emergency across nearly 900 districts on the Pacific coast, in the Andes and in the Amazon, citing an "imminent danger" from intense rainfall as forecasters raise the odds of an extraordinary-strength El Niño this coming rainy season.

The measure, Supreme Decree No. 124-2026-PCM, was signed by President Keiko Fujimori on August 31 and published Tuesday in the official gazette El Peruano. It covers 893 districts in 154 provinces spanning 22 of Peru's 24 regions plus the port province of Callao, among them the northern departments of Piura, Tumbes and Lambayeque, the capital region of Lima — including 18 districts of metropolitan Lima itself — and the interior regions of Cajamarca, Loreto and Ucayali.

Why now

The decision follows a fresh warning from Peru's multisectoral El Niño commission, known by its Spanish acronym ENFEN, which in its latest official bulletin put the probability of an extraordinary-magnitude coastal El Niño between September 2026 and January 2027 at 62%, up sharply in a matter of weeks. The commission expects conditions to peak between November and December before easing toward a strong-to-extraordinary range in February and March, with a gradual return to neutral only by the following autumn.

Peru's civil defense institute, its meteorology and hydrology service, and its disaster-risk research center all signed off on the underlying technical reports, which found that "continued Coastal El Niño conditions and the development of El Niño in the central equatorial Pacific could contribute to intense rainfall," according to Infobae Peru's account of the decree.

"Continued Coastal El Niño conditions and the development of El Niño in the central equatorial Pacific could contribute to intense rainfall."

Roughly 1.2 million people live in the districts now classified as high-risk for flooding and landslides, with authorities flagging northern agricultural zones — Peru's main source of rice, bananas and export crops such as blueberries and asparagus — as the most exposed. In poorer hillside neighborhoods ringing Lima, where homes are often built on dry ravines, sudden downpours can trigger the fast-moving mud-and-debris flows Peruvians call huaicos, which have proven the deadliest hazard in past El Niño years. Warmer coastal waters associated with the same weather pattern also threaten the anchovy fishery that ENFEN's parent body, the Peruvian marine research institute Imarpe, is charged with monitoring, since anchovy stocks retreat from unusually warm water and Peru is the world's largest exporter of fishmeal. The declaration is a Level 4 designation, meaning local and regional governments are judged to lack the capacity to respond on their own.

The warning carries recent memory behind it. An earlier bout of coastal El Niño rains hammered northern Peru between January and March this year, triggering floods and landslides that left dozens dead, with Cajamarca's overflowing rivers and hillside collapses accounting for the heaviest toll.

Under the decree, the 22 regional governments and the affected municipalities are authorized to carry out "exceptional, immediate and necessary" risk-reduction, response and rehabilitation measures — from clearing drainage channels to reinforcing riverbanks and stocking emergency shelters — under the technical coordination of the National Civil Defense Institute (Indeci) and with participation from the health, education, agriculture, housing, defense, interior, transport, energy and social-welfare ministries. The decree specifies that the response is to be financed from each agency's existing institutional budget "without demanding additional resources from the Public Treasury," a provision also noted in La República's report on the decree.

ENFEN is due to issue its next monthly assessment on September 14, which will show whether the 62% probability is climbing further as the Southern Hemisphere summer approaches. Peru's rainy season in the affected regions typically runs from September through April, meaning the 60-day window set by Tuesday's decree will need to be renewed if forecasts hold.