"There is no doubt that the deforestation has left El Salvador even more vulnerable to climate change and the storms it is increasingly bringing," says Ricardo Navarro, director of CESTA, the national branch of Friends of the Earth.

There was only one extreme storm in each of the 1960s and 1970s, and two in the 1980s, according to data released by MARN. But in the 1990s there were four, including Hurricane Mitch in 1998, which killed thousands across Central America. In the last decade, there were eight. So far, in this decade there has already been one, a massive tropical depression in October last year, named 12E by scientists. It lasted 10 days and saw between 762mm and 1513mm of rain, depending on where in the country it was measured. The higher figure was roughly equivalent to the country's average annual rainfall in the 1970s, 80s and 90s.

"The flood destroyed my whole harvest," says Herminia Arqueta, who lives in the village of Octavio Ortiz, beside the mouth of the Lempa about a mile from La Tirana. "My house was flooded for three weeks and we had to free all the chickens and ducks, otherwise they would have died."

Worse still, that harvest of corn and rice had been financed with a $1,000 (£600) loan which she has yet to repay. Desperate, she is considering selling five of her seven dairy cows, for around £150 each. The cows provide her and her three daughters aged 11 to 18 with a vital source of nutrition. She sells what is left over, bringing in her only regular cash income, £1.60 a day.