Bogota, July 14, 2022 (AFP) – At least eight children were stranded after a landslide that collapsed a rural school in the coffee-growing municipality of the Andes in northwest Colombia on Thursday, local officials said.
Videos posted on social media show dozens of villagers trying to clear a slope of fallen trees and rubble with shovels.
Daniel Quintero, the mayor of Medellin, the capital of the state of Antioquia, where the landslide occurred, said on Twitter, “Urgent – Andes Municipality: The school in the rural area of El Porvenir was buried due to a landslide. The first information is about 8 children trapped.”
The tweet was accompanied by a video of the landslide, and an off-camera voice asked for help: “Please an emergency machine to cooperate with us, humans cooperate but we need a machine.”
The Disaster Risk Management Unit stated that the incident occurred in the village of Tapartó.
There are still no consolidated numbers for how many children were in school during the landslide caused by heavy rains due to the La Niña phenomenon, a climatic event caused by the cooling of the Pacific Ocean.
According to the Institute of Hydrology, Meteorology and Environmental Studies, the rains affecting most of Colombia’s territory will continue until September.
source: Noticias
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