(Quito) A landslide in southern Equator, an area subject to severe weather for several weeks, has left at least 16 dead, 16 injured and seven missing, the National Risk Management Secretariat said on Monday.
Several dozen houses were buried overnight from Sunday to Monday in this Andean area hit last week by an earthquake.
Nearly 500 people in total were affected by the flow.
Reacting on Twitter, Ecuadorian President Guillermo Lasso said firefighters had been hard at work since the early hours of the morning “to come to the aid of the affected citizens”.
Images broadcast by local media show dozens of rescuers and civilians busying themselves around the debris, in the darkness of the night and torches in hand, to try to free buried people.
PHOTO KAREN TORO, REUTERS
People dig through debris in search of relatives, following a landslide in Alausi.
Since January, heavy rains have already left 22 dead and 346 homeless in Ecuador. More than 6,900 homes were damaged and 72 were destroyed, authorities said. Some 987 incidents were caused by bad weather, such as floods and landslides.
In February, rains led to a five-day suspension of crude oil pumping as a pipeline threatened to burst after a bridge collapsed.
Last week, 15 people were also killed in an earthquake in southwestern Ecuador, including one in neighboring Peru.