Venezuelan waters and floods

Venezuela is a tropical country. As you would expect, the tropics are subjected to torrential rain seasons during which little streams become huge rivers and part of the country gets flooded. The picture above, taken last year while driving through the flat lands called “Los Llanos” shows one of such rivers during the dry season. You can imaging the whole area flooded during the rains season. It has always been like this, and the people living there are used to expect such flooding and have a way to deal with them.

Recently, however, there has been a change. At the end of December 1999, unusual rains during the dry season have caused floods and mudslides on the coast in front of Caracas, isolating entire villages and destroying entire neighbourhoods in the slums precariously hanging on the mountains around Caracas. Even though the exact number of casualties is unknown, it is assumed to have been in the tens of thousands, with an even larger number of displaced people that lost their homes.

Even though it didn’t make the first pages in the newspapers, a repeat of the same tragedy happened in Venezuela two weeks ago. The rains this times involved most of the country (and part of Colombia), including the andean region of Merida where Mayli’s family live, and where we have been in December. In this occasion the government has been more prepared and acted to minimize the consequences of the floods and mudslides, but the disaster involved a huge area all over the country, and there are still a lot of communities that are isolated, and the number of casualties is unknown. As an example, a friend of mine sent me a link with pictures taken in the region of Merida after the rains: roads interrupted, houses crashed and bridges destroyed. The road we have driven at Christmas, from which I took the photo linked above probably does not exists anymore.

A slideshow with pictures and news of the disaster is available in the yahoo news site.