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What happened, where and when?
On 15 May 2025, the National Meteorological Service (SMN), through its Early Warning System, issued an Orange Alert Level for the Metropolitan Area of Buenos Aires (AMBA) and the north of the province of Buenos Aires, due to forecasts of intense and persistent rains. In response, local and provincial authorities, together with community institutions, implemented preventive measures such as the cancellation of classes and mass outdoor events, the issue of public alerts, and reinforcement of risk communication systems.
During the early morning of 16 May 2025, several cities in the AMBA and the north of the province recorded extraordinary rainfall that caused smaller-scale local damage in cities such as Chacabuco and Chivilcoy, but as the hours went by, they intensied and as of Saturday, 17 May 2025, in some cases, they exceeded 350 mm in less than 12 hours. This accumulation caused a collapse in the urban and rural drainage systems, causing massive ooding, ash oods and serious diculties for mobility, which implied the closure of national routes, the entry of water into homes, the interruption of basic services and forced the initiation of rescue and evacuation tasks that are still active.
On 17 May 2025, the SMN raised the Alert Level to Red due to the persistence of the rains and the worsening of the ood outlook. The ooding of rivers and streams in dierent basins – such as the Areco River, which aects Campana and surrounding areas – intensied the impacts of the event.
In total, more than 250,000 people would be experiencing some type of direct impact (damage to homes, interruption of services, displacement, etc.) or indirect (impossibility of leaving their homes, people stranded on roads and road corridors, etc.), in the northern and western corridors of the AMBA and the provincial interior.
In many urban and peri-urban areas, water entered homes with levels of more than 1.5 meters, forcing emergency evacuations and considerable material losses, especially in Campana, in neighborhoods such as San Cayetano, Lubo, Las Acacias and Villanueva where pre-existing conditions of vulnerability and historical drainage problems caused accumulated rainfall of more than 400mm