Rescue operations continue slowly overnight from Tuesday to Wednesday in Alausi, southern Ecuador, where a landslide has left at least 11 dead and 67 missing, but hopes of finding survivors are dwindling. dwindling more than two days after the disaster.
Accompanied by sniffer dogs, groups of rescuers and residents carefully search the rubble, after a huge mountain slab broke off overnight from Sunday to Monday in this town in the province of Chimborazo, some 300 km north. south of Quito.
“It becomes almost impossible to carry out a total removal (of the debris) and what we will find, if we find them, will be bodies”, explains sadly Adriana Guzmán, member of a firefighting team.
According to the latest official report, the landslide left 11 dead and 67 missing, and 163 houses were affected by the mudslide which fell on a peripheral district clinging to the mountainside.
On the spot, the survivors attended all day Tuesday, between anger and helplessness, the rescue operations to try to free their buried relatives.
“Here lie my daughter, my granddaughter, my whole family (…) Our pain is terrible,” Carlos Maquero told AFP, his face shattered by pain, and launching terrible calls for help. speed up the excavation work.
“My sisters managed to escape, thank God (…) but my sister-in-law did not manage to get out, she was buried there with her babies”, laments Carmen Quiroz.
As the hours go by, hopes of finding survivors dwindle.
There is an “accumulation of tons and tons of earth” which “makes it difficult for the victims to survive,” Fernando Yanza, one of the firefighters working on the site, told AFP.
The accumulated earth “takes away the little oxygen and that is the main problem” faced by people trapped under the flow, Yanza said after emerging from a four-meter-deep excavation without finding any sign of life.
“The more you dig, the more dangerous it is” because the ground is unstable, he added.
Arriving there on Monday evening, Ecuadorian President Guillermo Lasso was greeted with boos and cries of hostility: “Out Lasso!”
“I was able to see with my own eyes the search and rescue work carried out by the rescuers”, he commented on Twitter after meeting the local authorities, assuring that these operations would continue “as long as necessary” .
In the disaster area, some 600 houses spared by the landslide were evacuated on the orders of the authorities. The government has set up three shelters for the victims of the landslide, which has spread over 24.3 hectares.
The story of Jacob, a black Labrador desperately looking for his masters under the rubble, has gone viral on social networks: the animal sniffs, digs, howls… According to local media, only two members of the family who welcomed were saved. Neighbors who recognized the dog dressed him in a green T-shirt to identify him.
The area where the tragedy occurred had been on “yellow alert” since February due to heavy rainfall. In addition, the authorities had warned of a possible collapse of the road in this same sector.
Hit by heavy rains that caused widespread flooding, Ecuador last week declared a state of emergency in 13 of the country’s 24 provinces to mobilize resources to help those affected.
Before the mudslide, Ecuador already had 22 dead and more than 6,900 homes affected by the weather.
29/03/2023 13:46:54 – Alausí (Ecuador) (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
