
LIMA – Seventy-five people have died, 263 have been injured, 20 are missing, about 100,000 have suffered property damage and some 630,000 have been affected in Peruvian flooding, according to the latest damage assessment report released by the National Emergency Operations Center (COEN).
The report, which includes damage registered since the rainy season began in December, does not count the four people who disappeared on Saturday when a bridge collapsed and they fell into a flood-swollen river.
The flooding has also destroyed 12,000 homes, 25 schools and eight hospitals or clinics, along with about 2,000 kilometers (about 1,200 miles) of roadways and almost 9,000 hectares (22,500 acres) of crops.
Most of the victims are in the northern regions of Piura, Lambayeque, La Libertad and Ancash, where 25 people have died, 111 are injured, eight are missing, 81,000 have lost their homes and about 8,200 houses have been destroyed.
Lambayeque is the location of the greatest number of victims (41,000), followed by Piura (19,000), Ancash (17,600) and La Libertad (3,200).
In La Libertad’s capital, Trujillo, more than half the local residents have gone for two days without potable water after the main canal supplying water to the city ruptured, and the government intends to provide them with water containers and cisterns.
Parts of the Panamerica Norte highway, which runs along the coast from Lima to Ecuador, have been damaged, and the Transportation and Communications Ministry on Sunday authorized fishing boats to transport basic products from Lima to the ports in the affected zones.
Some homes in the capital have been without potable water for the past two days after mudslides cascaded into the Rimac River, the main source of water for Lima.
The heavy rains are due to El Niño, which has heated the ocean along the Peruvian coast to an abnormal degree, producing intense and unusual rainfall.