MEDELLIN – Rescue workers in Colombia recovered 20 bodies yesterday but said more than 100 people remained missing, feared dead, after a landslide buried a poor city suburb in tons of sodden soil.
The mudslide in Medellin was triggered by Colombia’s worst rain in at least 40 years, which has driven thousands from their homes and damaged coffee and flower crops.
Thirty brick homes were buried by at least 1.7 million cubic feet of earth, said John Rendon, disaster co-ordinator for Antioquia state, where the suburb of Bello is located.
“The weather was good yesterday, and also today, but the soil is saturated and it gave,” he said.
Interior minister German Vargas told reporters that 20 bodies had been recovered and that more than 100 people remained missing.
That brought the death toll from floods and mudslides triggered by this year’s rainfall to 196, said the director of Colombia’s national disaster management office, Luz Amanda Pulido.
Last year, 110 people died in rainfall-related calamities, while 48 were killed in 2008, Colombian Red Cross director of national relief operations Carlos Ivan Marquez said recently.
This year’s rains – exacerbated by the La Niña weather phenomenon – are the heaviest in the 42 years since the country’s weather service was created and started keeping records, agency director Ricardo Lozano said.
The national government says 1.6 million people have either lost their homes or suffered partial damage. Ms Pulido said about 70 per cent to 80 per cent lived in inundated flood plains and had not abandoned them “because they don’t want to leave their homes and belongings for fear of losing everything”.
In Antioquia, nearly five out of six municipalities have declared emergencies due to the rains.
Colombia’s agriculture minister, Juan Camilo Restrepo, said that while 5 per cent of the country’s croplands had been flooded this year, there was no shortage of food. The coffee and flower industries have reported serious damage that they said would hurt exports.
Colombia has two rainy seasons. The first extends from March to June, the second begins in September and normally ends in mid-December. – (AP)