Rescue workers recovered 20 bodies but
said more than 100 people remained missing and feared dead Monday
following a landslide that buried a poor Medellin suburb after
Colombia's heaviest rains in decades.
The rains that triggered Sunday's landslide have also driven
thousands from their homes, damaged coffee and flower crops and
snarled the two-lane highways that are mountainous Colombia's
commercial backbone.
Claudia Patricia Molina, 37, lost her home when the hillside came
crashing down with a roar that sounded "as if someone had placed a
bomb." She was about four blocks away, visiting friends, when the
slide struck.
"It shook powerfully and when we looked over we saw rocks
falling," she said. A couple who lived next to Molina were buried
alive with their 2-year-old daughter, she added.
Thirty brick homes were buried by at least 1.7 million cubic feet
(50,000 cubic meters) of earth, said John Rendon, disaster
coordinator 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 told The Associated Press.
Interior Minister German Vargas told reporters that 20 bodies
were recovered and more than 100 people were missing as of Monday.
That brought the death toll from floods and mudslides generated
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 told the AP recently.
This year's rains - exacerbated by the La Nina 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.
They prompted President Juan Manuel Santos to announce on
Saturday that he was canceling a planned trip to Cancun, Mexico to
take part in global climate talks. Scientists believe that rising
temperatures caused by greenhouse gas emissions will lead to more
extreme fluctuations in climate.
Venezuela has also been hit hard by flooding that has killed at
least 34 people and left more than 5,000 people homeless. More than
100,000 people have taken refuge at hundreds of shelters, Venezuelan
Defense Minister Carlos Mata Figueroa said.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said all military bases woul be
converted into refuges and that flood victims would get a special
"Christmas bonus." On Sunday, he ordered hotels in the coastal
city of Higuerote to offer refuge to victims.
Colombia's government says 1.6 million people have either lost
their homes or had homes suffer partial damage. About 70 percen to
80 percent live in inundated flood plains and have not abandoned
them "because they don't want to leave their homes and belongings
for fear of losing everything," Pulido said.
In Antioquia, nearly five out of six municipalities have declared
emergencies due to the rains.
Colombia has two rainy sasons. The first extends from March
through June. The second begins in September and normally ends in
mid-December.
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Associated Press writer Vivian Sequera contributed to this
report.
