(Bogotá) Trente-quatre personnes, dont huit mineurs, ont trouvé la mort dans le glissement de terrain qui a enseveli dimanche un bus et plusieurs véhicules dans le nord-ouest de la Colombie, a-t-on appris lundi de source officielle.
« Parmi les 34 victimes, il y a huit [adolescents] minors and nine other people are being treated in centers,” according to a statement from the Colombian emergency services (UNGRD).
Under the effect of heavy rains, a section of mountain fell off and buried several vehicles on the road downstream, including a public transport bus with 33 people on board, a car carrying six people and a motorcycle on which there were two people, he added.
In the morning, President Gustavo Petro had reported 27 dead, including three minors.
The bus came from the city of Cali (southwest) and went to Quibdo (northwest), capital of the department of Choco, crossing the western Andes mountain range.
PHOTO AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Aerial view of rescue workers searching for survivors
Some 80 rescuers took part in the rescue operations, which ended on Monday, AFP journalists noted.
At the site of the disaster, relatives of the victims said they had received no information about the identity of the dead.
Yilder Suarez went there to hear from her sister. “No one tells us if she is fine or if she is one of the deceased.”
Buried under two meters
Excavators were used to reach the buried bus “under about two meters of earth”, according to the UNGRD.
The Colombian press was particularly moved by the case of a child, who emerged alive from the wreckage of the bus and withdrawn from the arms of her deceased mother.
According to the testimony of a survivor, the driver of the coach realized the collapse and tried, without success, to reverse to escape the flow.
Since early August, the country has been in a state of “national disaster” due to the worst rainy season in 40 years. Before this accident, these rains caused 271 deaths and 700,000 victims over the past year.
This precipitation is associated with La Niña, a cyclical climatic phenomenon caused by the cooling of the Pacific Ocean, which warming is likely to make more frequent and more deadly, scientists believe.
According to the Colombian Geological Service, “the municipality of Pueblo Rico is under very high threat of landslides […] associated with the La Niña phenomenon, which has been present since August 2020”.
The Pueblo Rico landslide “has mourned this city today, but tomorrow it could happen in another region, because we really have many areas of instability in the country and the rainy season is not over”, UNGRD official Javier Pava told the press.
“We want to declare the maximum alert throughout the territory because of this winter wave which has caused so much material damage and also attacks on life like the one that has just occurred”, commented the Minister of the Interior on Monday. and government spokesman, Alfonso Prada, after a council of ministers devoted in particular to the disaster of this Sunday.
Road accidents are one of the leading causes of death in Colombia, with more than 7,200 people killed in 2021 in a country of 50 million people.