Stay with me, Colombia – With a sea of mud up to their knees and among furniture and vehicles dragged by the mud, relatives of the victims of the avalanche that devastated the village of Naranjal, in the town of Quetame, in central Colombia, desperately search for the disappeared with hoping to find them alive.
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12 hours after the tragedy, 15 lifeless bodies have been found, including several children, as well as half a dozen injured while the search for the missing continues, whose number no one knows exactly.
Julián Romero, a resident of the neighboring sector of Limoncitos, walks from one place to another trying to find his 26-year-old sister-in-law and his six-year-old nephew, and affirms: “Some say that they are dead and others say that they are not. are”.
Both lived with their brother in the village of Naranjal, devastated by the heavy rains that caused the overflow of two streams tributaries of the Negro River at dawn this Tuesday.
When asked if he intends to reach the epicenter of the emergency, despite the risk of collapse of the area due to the persistence of rainfall, his answer is clear: he must go help “the Chinese”, in reference to his brother Pedro, husband and father of the disappeared.
“Last night they called (Pedro) because he is a guard on the Chirajara bridge (a viaduct that collapsed in January 2018 due to design errors). They told him that the ravine had grown and that the mud had taken over and covered it,” he says. Romero to EFE.
A destroyed sidewalk and heavy losses
According to data from the Mayor’s Office of Quetame, which belongs to the department of Cundinamarca, “there are 20 (the) missing houses” under the mud left by the avalanche, in this community that, in the words of the general director of the National Unit for the Management of Disaster Risk (UNGRD), Olmedo López, should not be inhabited again.
The authorities also reported that the avalanche took with it a bridge, which caused the closure of the highway that connects Bogotá with Villavicencio, capital of the Meta department and one of the main agricultural pantries in the country.
Of the three minors reported as deceased in the disaster, the death of Stefy Carolina Viracachá was confirmed, a promise of skating from the Training School of the municipality of Guayabetal whose death at the age of 13 was lamented by the Cundinamarca Skating League, according to the which the young athlete lost her life “along with several members of her family”.
Likewise, the director of the Police, General William René Salamanca, confirmed the death of “several relatives” of Captain Lizbeth Herrera, to whom he conveyed his condolences.
According to local media, the officer lost her parents, a brother and an uncle in the tragedy.
While the dogs trained for the search and rescue of victims and survivors make their way through the rubble, the merchants of the area carry on their shoulders the few belongings that they were able to rescue from their businesses in the midst of the destruction.
To deal with the emergency, the Army’s Disaster Care and Prevention Brigade arrived at the scene, as well as the UNGRD, which is leading the search for the disappeared.
