Perilous Times and Climate Change
Latin America counts the cost after deadly rains
by Staff Writers
Panama City (AFP) Dec 9, 2010
The heaviest rains in at least a decade has left hundreds dead in
Colombia, Venezuela and Panama, caused millions of dollars in damages
and forced a rare 17-hour closure of the Panama Canal, officials said.
Rescuers said Thursday they have recovered 55 bodies out of 121
believed to be buried alive in a massive weekend mudslide in
northwestern Colombia. The Antioquia department governor's spokesman
Jorge Salazar said 23 of the victims were children.
Many of the children had participated in celebrations for their first
communion near Colombia's second-largest city of Medellin.
The yearly rainy season has been exacerbated by a La Nina weather
phenomenon, in which cooler-than-normal water circulates in the Pacific
Ocean around the equator.
In Venezuela to the east, driving rains began receding after causing
floods and cave-ins that have killed at least 35 people over the past
week and left 124,000 homeless. Another six people are still missing.
Earlier in the season, La Nina's deadly havoc killed some 263 people in
Guatemala and over 130 in Mexico.
Hundreds of rescue workers in Colombia battled a narrowing time window
to find people still alive under the mud, combing through the mess with
sniffer dogs and heavy machinery to search for the remaining 66
missing. Authorities had initially estimated that up to 200 people were
caught in the avalanche.
So far this year, the rains in Colombia have left 206 people dead,
while 119 remain missing and 1.7 million were affected. Over 2,000
homes were destroyed and 275,000 were damaged, according to the latest
official figures.
The leftist National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrilla group proposed a
truce with President Juan Manuel Santos's government so that disaster
response work could proceed unhindered.
In neighboring Panama, recent floods from heavy rains have collapsed
bridges, destroyed homes, cut off several communities and caused
disruptions to electrical and water supply.
Authorities updated the toll to 10 from the downpours that left some
4,000 people homeless.
"We will declare a state of national emergency and we will begin to
bring aid and assistance to all populations that have had problems,"
President Ricardo Martinelli told reporters.
"These are the fiercest rains in Panamanian history since records
began. Some people say it has not rained so much in the past 5,000
years."
The Panama Canal reopened earlier Thursday after a suspension due to
heavy rains that swelled nearby lakes flowing into the key transport
route, which handles five percent of global trade.
It was the first time the entire canal was closed since the 1989 US
invasion of the Central American nation.
The 80-kilometer (50-mile) man-made artery links the Atlantic to the
Pacific, with around 40 ships passing through the canal each day.
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