More than 7,000 citizens of the municipality of Colombia and several villages are cut off due to the collapse of a bridge that connects them with the rest of the department and the country.
Students, farmers and merchants They have to walk more than an hour and a half to get to school or sell their productsthus having million-dollar losses and even risking their lives.
The inhabitants of the municipality and about seven surrounding villages have been cut off from the rest of the country for about two months, before the collapse of Santana bridge, due to heavy rains, which caused flooding of the La Legiosa stream.
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Fabián Alexander González, councilor of the municipality of Colombia, indicated that “we have been dealing with this problem since December 2023. It was a new bridge that, due to constant flooding, the ravine took away part of the bridge’s bench. which caused there to be no access to the bridge.”
The Santana Bridge is located 50 minutes from the urban area of the municipality of Colombia on the road that goes to El Doradoalso known as La Macarena road, and it is very important, since it is part of the project that aims precisely to unite this municipality with La Uribe, in Meta.
In this way, despite the different requests and proposals that councilors and citizens have put before the Government of Huila, from the start of the rains, so that damage can be intervened early that the ravine has constantly caused and does not worsen, the authorities apparently have not paid enough attention to the problem.
“It is a tragedy he announces, Well, from the council several times we have been making the request to control the flow of the riversince it is presumed that with the rainy season, this will continue to undermine part of the road,” González explained.
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Likewise, the cost of repairing the bridge would be double the cost of its construction, which was approximately $3,000 million, so “can’t be dropped”. According to citizens Everything possible should be done to advance its reconstructionand thus have the people communicated again and also save their economy.
“We hope to have greater visibility from the departmental government, because we feel abandoned. Merchants and farmers have had million-dollar losses by not being able to go out and sell their products such as beans,” added the councilor.
On the other hand, given the problems caused by the recent rains in the municipality of Colombia, where the Ambicá River swelled, it was learned that Secretary Andrés Camilo Cabrera Leiva directed the movement of machinery with which, It was possible to remove landslides that allowed mobility to be restored in the entrance sector to the municipality; Even so, the damage continues on the Santa Bridge.
