Venezuela flood death toll put in thousands
12/19/99
*******************************
RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:
Title: Venezuela flood death toll put in thousands
Buildings and homes were reduced to rubble in Venezuelan
flood
Source: Reuters
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: December 19, 1999
Thousands of people were killed by flash floods and mudslides that
swamped Venezuela's Caribbean coast last week, burying towns under
tons of mud and boulders, a government minister said Sunday.
``There are thousands of people missing and unfortunately there are
thousands of people dead,'' Foreign Minister Jose Vicente Rangel said
in an interview in Caracas with Colombia's RCN radio network.
Another 200,000 people were left homeless by the South American
country's worst natural disaster this century and the biggest such
tragedy in Latin America since Hurricane Mitch killed more than 9,000
people and left two million homeless in Central America in October
1998.
Worst hit was the thin coastal strip of Vargas state, home to about
350,000 people just north of the capital Caracas, which was the scene
of an exodus of tens of thousands of refugees Sunday by air, land and
sea.
Rangel's remarks represented the first official recognition that the
death toll caused by torrential rains Wednesday and Thursday had run
into the thousands, corroborating versions from survivors who spoke
of whole settlements disappearing under a wave of earth and rocks
that crashed down from the coastal mountain range.
``I have good reason to think there are bodies which we'll never
find, who knows how many,'' President Hugo Chavez said.
CEMETERIES BURIED UNDER MUD
Chavez, the former army colonel who has turned the rescue into a
military operation involving warships and paratroopers, said ice and
lime were being used to slow down the decomposition of the bodies,
many of which had not been identified.
Burials were delayed by the fact that most of the Vargas cemeteries
lay under yards of mud, he said.
At the South Cemetery in Caracas, city workers had to knock down the
main gates to allow in a truck carrying 85 bodies wrapped in green
plastic bags. City cemeteries director Marcos Pantoja said another
1,500 graves were being dug to receive the victims.
With officials hinting that most of Vargas state would have to be
razed, the government launched a massive air-and-sea military rescue
operation involving 12,000 troops, about 40 helicopters and several
warships.
Men were dropped on remote beaches, some rappelling down from
helicopters in the least accessible spots, to bring drinking water
and medicine to those in need.
In the coastal port town of La Guaira, hundreds of people poured out
of navy frigates that had carried them from a beachhead in nearby
Caraballeda, one of the most affected areas. Disheveled survivors
lined up to receive bags of clothing and shoes and take smaller navy
ships to ports away from the disaster zone.
INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT BECOMES MILITARY AIR BASE
Nearby, Reuters correspondent Daniel Flynn said the Simon Bolivar
international airport resembled a military air base as dozens of
helicopters buzzed in and out carrying the injured and elderly from
remote areas, inaccessible by land.
``I've spent three days on the mountain. I haven't eaten a thing,''
said 60-year-old Rafaela Vargas, who scrambled up the steep side of
the coastal range to escape the rising waters.
``My house was flattened, my husband was killed. I'm all alone,'' she
sobbed, clutching a torn rag in her hand, at the airport to which she
was airlifted Sunday after a team of firefighters came to rescue her.
In Carmen de Uria, a town of about 7,000 people located 10 miles east
of La Guaira, Reuters correspondent Tom Ashby said virtually every
house was either totally covered in debris or partially damaged.
Dozens of crosses improvised from driftwood and wire dotted the muddy
streets.
The once-plush town of elegant homes, where many wealthy Caracas
residents would spend weekends by the beach, was virtually deserted.
``Half the town is dead, it's now a cemetery,'' said Fulgencio
Villaruel, a middle-aged man searching for coconuts along the shore
for young children in need of liquid.
As survivors waited under the baking sun to be airlifted to safety,
health officials warned of the growing health risks in an area
without power and running water.
``The risk of dengue, cholera, gangrene outbreaks is very high
because there are 1,000 or 2,000 bodies under the mud,'' Red Cross
volunteer Jonathan Marques said in Carmen de Uria.