Rescuers and Relatives Race to Find Survivors of Colombia Mudslide
"But the water caught up to them in the street, and my mother let go of his hand." The city was cut off from many services
on Sunday, leaving nearly all residents without electricity, clean water or gasoline; many people huddled in shelters.
"The only thing I found was a backpack." Anxious relatives like Mr. Ramírez
and more than 1,500 rescue workers raced on Sunday to find anyone who might still be alive and trapped in the wreckage in Mocoa, where parts of the city have been wiped off the map by a deluge of mud and floodwaters.
By SUSAN ABAD and NICHOLAS CASEYAPRIL 2, 2017
BOGOTÁ, Colombia — Gildardo Ramírez reached Mocoa on Sunday, only to find a scene of rubble where his Aunt Claudia’s neighborhood had been.
Many people were still missing, he said: "Under the mud, I am sure there are many
more." Susan Abad reported from Bogotá, and Nicholas Casey from Iquitos, Peru.
Mocoa said that I arrived to the house, and it was destroyed,
OF PUTUMAYO ECUADOR PERU 200 Miles APRIL 2, 2017
Carolina Garreta said that The avalanche startled me when I was sleeping, and I went out to the street
"We have a huge challenge to find the missing people," Carlos Ivan Márquez, the head of Colombia’s natural disaster unit, told reporters.
"There’s not a single drop of drinkable water — we need water, that’s what’s urgent —
and there’s nothing to eat," Marisol González, the head of a nearby technological institute, told the newspaper El Tiempo.