Rescue teams with drones searched for survivors on Tuesday after a landslide triggered by heavy rains left at least eight people dead and some eleven missing in central Colombia.
Handout/Colombian Police/AFP
- At least eight people died after landslide, triggered by heavy rains hit the Quetame municipality on Tuesday.
- Rescue teams with drones searched for survivors following the downpours that destroyed several homes and roads.
- Quetame mayor Camilo Parrado said some households “lost two, three, even four family members.”
Rescue teams with drones searched for survivors Tuesday after a landslide triggered by heavy rains left at least eight people dead and about a dozen missing in central Colombia, authorities said.
Several homes were destroyed and a major trade artery blocked by mud after torrential rains hit the Quetame municipality in Colombia’s Cundinamarca department late Monday.
The dead included one child, civil defense director Jorge Diaz told AFP.
Six people were injured in the deluge and 20 homes razed, he said.
“It has not been possible to quantify the number of missing persons, but there is talk of 11… We are trying to identify the people who lived in the 20 destroyed houses,” said Diaz.
READ | Rescuers recover last body from flooded South Korean tunnel
Quetame Mayor Camilo Parrado said some households “lost two, three, even four family members.”
Mud was piled a meter high, up to two meters in some places, he told El Dorado Radio, making for a “very complex” search and rescue operation.
“Relief agencies with drones are resuming the search,” said the mayor.
Firefighters have evacuated dozens of survivors, six of whom were taken to hospital.
The Cundinamarca fire department put the estimated number of missing people at 20.
Diaz said the landslide buried part of a road linking Bogota to the southeast of the country – one of the country’s main freight routes.
It happened near a toll post some 60 kilometres from the capital, and destroyed a bridge.
Large rocks and mud now obstruct the road between Bogota and Villavicencio, an AFP reporter observed, with several trucks and motorcycles trapped in mud.
On Twitter, President Gustavo Petro offered his condolences to the families of victims and said the disaster demonstrated the need to bolster infrastructure around at-risk areas.
The rainy season in Colombia started in June and usually lasts until November.
Rescue personnel worked at the site of a landslide in the municipality of Quetame, Cundinamarca department in Colombia where eight people died.
Last year, seasonal flooding in the country left some 300 dead overall, including 34 people who died when an avalanche swallowed up a bus and other vehicles.
Colombia declared a national disaster in 2022 over the rains linked to an exceptionally long La Nina weather phenomenon, which cools surface temperatures and causes flooding in some parts of the world.
Earlier this month, the UN’s World Meteorological Organization warned that extreme weather and climate shocks were becoming more acute in Latin America and the Caribbean.
ALSO READ | Colombian children who survived five weeks in jungle released from hospital
Many recent events in the region were influenced by La Nina “but also bore the hallmark of human-induced climate change,” it said.
The UN agency cautioned that an El Nino event that has taken route in the aftermath of La Nina, will “bring with it more extreme weather.”
