136 Dead in Colombian rainy season

Sucre, Agency
At least 136 people have died, 1.3 million have been affected and a number of towns literally have been submerged, according to the Colombian government's assessment of the country's worst rainy season in the past three decades.

After more than 48 hours of intense rain, Bogota Mayor Samuel Moreno decreed a yellow alert on Wednesday night in the capital, thus activating 20 local emergency committees and strengthening vigilance at the 84 points around the city that are considered critical.

The last time the Colombian capital experienced such intense rain was in November 1973, and the situation is expected to continue through late December, according to the Hydrology, Meteorology and Environment Studies Institute of Colombia, or Ideam.

The Bogota River on Tuesday reached a height of 195 centimeters (6.3 feet), the maximum registered in the past 30 years, and authorities called on residents of the areas along the river to be alert for a possible additional rise that could lead to serious flooding.

The torrential rains that have fallen in Colombia since early this year as a result of the La Niña weather phenomenon through Wednesday had led to 136 deaths and affected 1.3 million people.

In addition, according to the Colombian Red Cross, the rains have wiped out entire towns, caused mudslides and resulted in other emergencies in 552 of Colombia's 1,100 municipalities.

Moreover, 1,700 homes have been destroyed and another 200,000 have been damaged, and more than 120,000 hectares (300,000 acres) of crops have been ruined.

One of the regions most affected by the rains is the northern province of Sucre, where the approximately 250,000 inhabitants are living under flood conditions.

Gilma Martinez, 65, who is anemic and has kidney disease, is one of the people who has been affected by the downpours. She lives on top of some boards that separate her from the water that for the past five months has flooded her humble home next to the cemetery in Sucre, a picturesque town located between the Magdalena, Cauca and San Jorge rivers and surrounded by swamps.

The zone is quite literally flooded, as Efe was able to verify, and its residents are surviving with just the few belongings remaining to them after the majority of their possessions have been ruined by the humidity and wet conditions.

In this town there is not a square inch of naturally dry land, and only the second stories of certain homes - or the houses of the more well-off people who have managed to erect containment walls - are truly out of the water.

The parish priest, the Rev. Eduardo Arce, who celebrates Mass in a community dining hall where he has set up an improvised altar, told Efe that the people are trying to organize themselves to travel to Bogota to ask for a meeting with President Juan Manuel Santos so that they can ask him to help them get out of their dire situation.

Just like the town of Sucre, its rural hinterland has also been inundated, an area where the residents are engaged in farming and ranching.

Many locals are sick with diarrhea and typhoid fever, but there is only one hospital in the region, and it - too - is flooded.

Scholar and writer Isidro Alvarez, the author of "El pais de las aguas," says that the extensive and uncontrolled cattle ranching and agriculture in the region are part of the reason why this year the flooding in the area has been greater and more devastating than in the past.

"This has been a flood zone for 4,000 years. The Panzenue and Zenue Indians made an entire hydraulic system and modern man has destroyed it. So, if we start to rebuild, to dredge ... and reestablish the natural system of swamps, we're going to start to mitigate the problem," Alvarez told Efe.

It has only been the arrival of the heavy rains in the Colombian capital that has called attention to a problem from which the country has been suffering for months and which in recent weeks has markedly worsened.