Search gets under way for people lost in flood

Colombian president Santos says death toll likely to climb

MOCOA, COLOMBIA— Townspeople desperately searched their ruined homes and the local hospital for loved ones Sunday after a torrent of water, mud and debris swept through a city in southern Colombia, causing more than 200 deaths, many of them children, and leaving hundreds more missing and injured.

Neighbourhoods were left strewn with rocks, wooden planks, tree limbs and brown muck after heavy rain caused the three rivers that surround Mocoa to rise up and surge through the city of 40,000 Friday night and early Saturday as people slept. The deluge smashed houses, tore trees out by the roots and washed cars and trucks away.

Search-and-rescue teams combed through the debris and helped people who had been desperately clawing at huge mounds of mud by hand.

“People went to their houses and found nothing but the floor,” said Gilma Diaz, a 42-year-old woman from another town who came to search for a cousin.

President Juan Manuel Santos, who visited Mocoa for a second straight day Sunday, declared the area a disaster zone and said the death toll stood at 210, but is likely to rise.

Maria Cordoba, a 52-year-old resident who was trying to wash her belongings in a river, said two of her nephews, ages 6 and 11, were killed when their house was destroyed. “The mother as well was totally beaten up” but managed to save her 18month-old baby, she said.

Santos said the avalanche of water and debris also knocked out power in half of the province of Putumayo, where Mocoa is located, and destroyed the area’s fresh water network.