05/04/2024
The timely action of the emergency agencies in the municipality of Montebello, southwestern Antioquia, prevented a tragedy from occurring yesterday and dozens of lives being lost.
After assessing the early warnings left by the downpour that hit the municipality since Friday night and monitoring the course of the tributaries in the area, Mayor Óscar Cuervo ordered the immediate evacuation of more than 100 families from the La Honda and Zarcitos villages.
Following the order, hundreds of people took the first things they could of their pets, livestock and belongings and fled to the upper part of the mountain.
Minutes later the emergency occurred. A torrential flood raged with all its force and along the way it took away 30 houses that were destroyed, as was recorded from a drone that monitored the situation from above.
The most affected families were those who live in a hamlet called La Puentecita. According to the mayor, although no human lives were lost and there were only three people with minor injuries, the families were not able to save all their animals and the current swept away several of them.
Governor Andrés Julián Rendón, who arrived in the afternoon to attend to the emergency, reported that 60 families had already managed to be evacuated. However, until last night at the time of going to press, 25 families were still waiting for the Government, air force and rescue organizations to find a way to carry out a safe evacuation from the mountain where they took refuge since they managed to escape from the avenue. torrential and they continued waiting at the top of the mountain for the departmental rescue organizations to arrive to evacuate them.
And, although the place of the emergency is only 15 minutes from the town center, Montebello also suffered several landslides on its roads, which left a large part of the municipality cut off for a good part of the day.
And it is that a landslide caused the closure of the Medellín-La Pintada road, which makes access to the municipality difficult, while a new landslide occurred on the road that leads from the Versalles township to the urban area of Montebello, which forced a new closure.
Montebello was not the only municipality where the incipient rainy season already caused considerable havoc.
The rainfall that began on Friday afternoon and lasted until yesterday afternoon caused flooding in Caldas, south of the Aburrá Valley, as confirmed by Captain Gladis González, of the Fire Department of that municipality, who explained that in In the early morning hours the Medellín River began to fall very strongly, so the water entered a sector of the La Clara village known as La Playita and affected a settlement of houses that is very close to the tributary.
In El Retiro they also woke up yesterday with water up to their knees due to the overflowing of the town’s two streams, the Agudelo and the Pantanito.
The authorities had to activate the municipal risk management council to expedite the response of operators, machinery, traffic agents and mayoral staff to clear the roads and prevent new damming of the tributaries.
The downpours also caused a real collapse in the mobility of several main corridors in the East and Southwest.
According to the Highway Police, until last night the Pintada-Medellín road in Alto de Minas was closed and the sector known as 60 was completely closed due to landslides. Also in Santa Bárbara, at kilometer 39+750 there was only one lane traffic for much of the day because a piece of the mountain fell away, throwing rock and dirt onto the road.
Santa Bárbara is one of the most affected municipalities in the Southwest, since It also presented closure on the La Mansa-Primavera road, one of the most historically complex sections in the Sinifaná sector and whose closure largely collapses mobility in this corridor.
Cocorná is another municipality seriously affected, to the point that it had to activate all its response capacity now because since Wednesday the main tributaries have shown signs that they could unleash major emergencies.
The municipality was incommunicado for much of the day yesterday after the closure of the Santuario-Caño Alegra road at kilometer 10+400. Also in the El Recreo sector, in the same municipality, only one lane had access due to land fall.
Also in the East, on the Santuario-Granada road, There was a transition to a lane after an earth movement took away an EPM power pole. The connection between Cocorná and Granada also presented problems in several sections and, as the authorities indicated yesterday, it was expected that the emergencies in that corridor would not be completely overcome until late this Sunday morning, and that was if it did not continue to rain, which is unlikely. .
The Government of Antioquia indicated that it has yellow machinery deployed on at least 15 fronts in the department. According to Ideam, Antioquia has 17 municipalities on red alert due to the risk of landslides, another 30 on orange alert and 38 on yellow alert. It is the department with the largest number of municipalities under alert.
Two weeks ago, the National Government asked the mayors in these risk areas to deliver updated maps of the critical points in their municipalities to carry out prevention and mitigation actions.
