100s Killed, Roads Buried & Crops Failing As Colombia Endures Nearly A Solid Year Of Rain - WP

[hatrack]

FUQUENE, Colombia — It’s been called Colombia’s Katrina, a full year of relentless downpours that have displaced or damaged the homes of 3.7 million people, ruptured major highways, burst dikes and killed hundreds, many in mudslides that engulfed poor communities. With no reprieve, dry and rainy seasons have merged, with one deluge following another. In remote hamlets, police now patrol from canoes. A swath of farmland the size of Connecticut has been flooded, slamming the country’s vital flower industry and wiping out everything from rice to banana plantations.

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The group’s report noted that the government’s family welfare institute had recently reported that 20 percent of children in shelters in the hard-hit state of Cordoba were at risk from malnutrition.

The rain here in the savannah, the high emerald plain that spreads north from Bogota, exposed how the re-engineering of waterways made matters worse.

The Bogota River, full of industrial waste and sewage and filled beyond capacity by the waters of rerouted streams, overflowed its banks and drowned farms with toxic water. The river even ruptured the floodwalls around the elite Savannah University in the Bogota suburb of Chia, ruining computers and furniture and prompting the rector to cancel classes for weeks.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/americas/biblical-rains-in-colombia/2011/06/25/AGHgRNmH_story.html

[SpiralHawk]

1. Of this, the Elder Brothers warned...