A severe bout of torrential rain has claimed the lives of at least 22 people and displaced thousands of families in Colombia’s northern cattle belt, officials reported on February 10.
“We’ve lost everything, all our belongings” said Ms Enid Gomez in Monteria, where residents waded through waist‑deep water, News.Az reports, citing foreign media.
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“We had never been through anything like this before” she told AFP.
“It always rained, but it was only a little. I mean, it wasn’t like it is now.”
Residents used motorboats and makeshift rafts to pull belongings from flooded homes as fields and pastureland vanished under water across Cordoba and Sucre departments.
The country’s disaster management agency said 22 people were killed across four departments.
Officials in the departments of Cordoba and Sucre said more than 9,000 homes had been affected, while the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said over 27,000 families had been hit.
