Landslide death toll tops 260 as Colombia declares emergency

BOGOTA, Colombia – More than 260 people were confirmed dead Monday two days after severe flooding and landslides hit the city of Mocoa in southwestern Colombia.

So far, 262 people have been killed, Colombia’s disaster agency said. Late Sunday President Juan Manuel Santos said 60 children were among the dead. More than 200 people were still missing.

On Monday Santos declared a state of emergency to release funds for rescue and reconstruction.

Water and sludge flowed into 17 of Mocoa’s 40 neighborhoods early Saturday, sweeping away houses or burying them under debris, after heavy rainfall caused the Mocoa, Mulato and Sancoyaco rivers to burst their banks.

Mocoa mayor Jose Antonio Castro said the deluge of mud, which damaged his own house, had been unstoppable.

“Even if we had built the Great Wall of China, we wouldn’t have held it back,” he told Radio Caracol.

Mocoa, which has a population of 40,000, is situated in Putumayo state near the Ecuadorean border, about 400 miles southwest of Colombia’s capital, Bogota.

Torrential rains have soaked South America’s northwestern coastal regions for weeks, causing widespread flooding in Colombia, Peru and Ecuador that has led to dozens of deaths.

Since December, flooding in Peru’s Piura region, about 800 miles south of Mocoa, has killed 91 people and affected more than 740,000, according to government agencies.

The rains are linked to a “coastal El Nino” climate phenomenon of unusually high temperatures along South America’s Pacific coast.