At least 33 people died, among them three minors, due to a landslide that fell yesterday Sunday on a bus and other vehicles traveling along a highway in northwestern Colombia, said President Gustavo Petro.
The last balance reported three deaths and twenty people trapped under the collapse.
The head of the National Unit for Disaster Risk Management (UNGRD), Javier Pava, reported that four people are injured and at least four more remain buried.
The rescuers continue to search for the passengers of a motorcycle and a public service bus that was carrying thirty people, said the same source.
The bus had left the city of Cali (southwest) at dawn on Sunday and traveled some 270 kilometers before crashing crossing the western Andes mountain range on its way to Quibdó, in the northwest, according to the Civil Defense.
Since the beginning of August, Colombia has been in a state of “national disaster” due to the worst rainy season in the last forty years, according to the government.
The rains are associated with La Niña, a cyclical weather phenomenon produced by the cooling of the Pacific Ocean and which global warming threatens to make it more frequent, according to scientists.
The landslide “today puts this town in mourning, tomorrow it could be in another area, because we really have many areas of instability in the country and the rainy season has not ended,” Pava declared.
