(EFE) – The president of Colombia Gustavo Petro declared this Sunday a disaster situation throughout the country due to the heavy rains in recent days that have caused floods, overflows and landslides that affect 27 of the 32 departments and nearly 46,000 families.
“Due to what is happening these days, a disaster situation is declared throughout the country due to climate variability, generating unpredictable and unusual impacts, increasing vulnerability in the territories,” said the president in a press conference after a committee emergency from a Unified Command Post (PMU).
This declaration will be for the entire country, but the efforts will focus on three areas “on a much larger scale,” in the words of Petro, who indicated that they are in the north of the department of La Guajira, in the entire department of Chocó and in Bogotá “due to shortage of drinking water.”
“What a declaration like this does is that we can, based on the decree, transfer the nation’s budget resources today to other entities that have nothing to do with this type of attention to the regions that are being climatic victims of the current situation.” The president detailed, adding that the rainy season will last throughout the month of December.
The president added that climate vulnerability in Colombia “is being worsened by impacts that have to do with deforestation, illicit economies and, in the case of Bogotá, in my opinion, by uncontrolled urbanization of the Bogotá Savannah.”
The heavy rains of recent days in Colombia have caused havoc in several regions of the country, affecting a total of 27 of the 32 departments, including flooding, overflowing rivers and streams, and landslides that affect 46,000 families.
“In the consolidated we are talking about 186 municipalities in 27 departments, with 467 registered events and about 46,000 families could be affected,” explained this Sunday in a press conference the director of the National Unit for Disaster Risk Management (UNGRD). ), Carlos Carrillo.
The department of Chocó is the most affected at the moment, with 22 municipalities affected and more than 30,000 families affected, according to preliminary figures offered by Carrillo, who indicated that at the moment there are no victims or missing people.
The departmental risk management committee of Chocó declared a public calamity after the serious damage in the region.
For its part, in the department of Santander, the flooding of the Las Cruces stream caused damage in the municipality of San Vicente de Chucurí, leaving one person dead and two missing, according to information shared by local media.
In Bogotá there were also recent damages, with flooding on the northern highway, as well as in the department of La Guajira with more than 10,000 families affected by floods.
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