The rains on the north Pacific coast of Peru, caused by Cyclone Yaku, left five dead, floods and collapsed wooden houses near rivers, several of them in the capital, authorities reported Monday.
The Civil Defense indicated that the day before a mass of wet earth – attached to a highway in the northern region of Ancash – fell on two buses and a van, leaving four dead and 20 injured. In the city of Chiclayo, located in the Lambayeque region, a 33-year-old man was electrocuted when he touched a power cable from a traffic light on a flooded street.
In the north of Lima, some 30 wooden houses built on the banks of the Chillón River were affected since early morning after the river increased its flow and began to gradually wash away the banks, where precarious houses have been built.
Celedonia Chota, a mother of three, told local television station Panamericana that she has lived by the river for eight years because she couldn’t buy a house in a better place. She stated that she woke up at dawn to her dogs barking. The woman watched as her house was swept away by the current of the river that carried away her walls, wooden windows, table, chairs, and few belongings. Chota recovered some ducks and chickens that she raised in her yard.
The rains continued to fall heavily in five regions of the northern Peruvian Pacific coast, including the city of Chepén, in the La Libertad region, which woke up again flooded like last week and with the collapsed walls of its old cemetery. According to the National Meteorology and Hydrology Service of Peru, the overflows and floods are driven by Cyclone Yaku present in the South Pacific off the coasts of Peru and Ecuador.
The government of President Dina Boluarte postponed the start of school classes in nine regions, including Lima, for a week on Monday. It also declared a two-month state of emergency for a third of the capital’s districts near rivers and the Pacific coast.
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