Sunday, December 5, 2010

Rains leave rising death toll in Colombia, Venezuela

Terra Daily via AFP: The toll from weeks of heavy rains across Colombia has risen to 174 people dead and over 1.5 million homeless, the Colombian Red Cross said Saturday. And in neighboring Venezuela to the east, driving rains have triggered flooding and cave-ins that have killed 34 people over the past week and left an estimated 73,000 people homeless nationwide, officials said.

In Colombia, 225 people have been injured and 19 were missing, Colombian Red Cross deputy director of operations Cesar Uruena told reporters. A total of 1,821 homes have been damaged or destroyed. "We've never had this many people affected by the rainy season," he added, noting that the punishing rains were hitting 95 percent of the country.

Some regions, including southwestern Valle del Cauca department, saw more than 12 hours of non-stop rain. More than a dozen mudslides blocked roads from Valle's capital Cali to the Pacific port town of Buenaventura, stranding hundreds of trucks and passenger vehicles….

Map of Colombia and Venezuela by NormanEinstein, Wikimedia Commons, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

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