Water evacuations in remote tourist regions: evaluating case studies from natural hazards in North Patagonian lakes, Argentina

The remote North Patagonian region is a sparsely populated territory and a world famous tourist destination located on the leeward side of the Andes Mountains. Recent disasters triggered by various types of geoenvironmental hazards (including volcanic eruptions, mass-wasting processes and extreme weather events) heavily disrupted ground transport networks in a region with already limited territorial accessibilities. All these catastrophes prompted the need to evacuate or assist a number of secluded visitors, locals and livestock extemporaneously on board of coastguards and tourist passenger-ships from the shores of the many glacial lakes that make up part of the regional attraction. Despite the recurrence of these types of events, water evacuations in the region continue to be spontaneous, improvised and hazardous procedures. This contribution reconstructs and assesses a number of recent local-scale cases of lake evacuations and assistances from a number of Patagonian urban centers, rural areas and tourist sites. For each case study, we systematically elaborated on the prime components of an evacuation process, which enabled us to recognize key achievements, failures and conditioning factors for managing emergencies via water transport, most of them inherent to the studied region. Some of the complexities to emerge from case studies referred to: complex hazard-related scenarios; limited ground-based accessibilities and risk of isolation; various inter- and intra-organizational issues, incidental to natural reserves and tourist regions; a wide range of particular demographic features; and the availability and vulnerability of water transport resources. We suggested fundamental and replicable recommendations for developing water evacuation plans, also identifying forthcoming problems to solve in order to improve the management of emergencies through this alternative means of transport.

[Magnetic resonance and clinical and electroencephalographical localization in focal epilepsy]

Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is the method of choice to search for epileptogenic lesions. We correlated MRI findings with the epileptogenic zone (EZ) depicted by clinical and electroencephalographic (EEG) data. We studied 400 clinical records of patients who had been submitted to MRI studies and we analyzed, retrospectively, their ictal semiology, EEG characteristics and response to treatment. They were classified into 3 groups: A) temporal lobe epilepsy, B) frontal lobe epilepsy and C) parieto-occipital epilepsy. We included 155 patients: Group A) 68 cases (43.9%), 28 men (41.1%), mean age 32 +/- 11 years old, abnormal IMR in 44 (64.7%), refractory to treatment 48 (70.5%). Group B) 68 cases (43.9%), 38 men (55.8%), mean age 30 +/- 15 years old, abnormal IMR in 26 (38.2%), refractory to treatment 30 (44.1%). Group C) 19 cases (12.2%), 13 men (68.4%), mean age 27 +/- 11 years old, abnormal IMR in 11 (57.8%), refractory to treatment 12 (63.1%). Results showed that there were higher possibilities of detecting lesions which correlate with EZ in temporal than in frontal or parieto-occipital lobes epilepsy. The chances to find abnormalities on the MRI were 5 times higher in refractory patients than in those who were non-refractory.