Just 1 hour from Pereira, one of the cities most affected by the earthquake last Monday, August 10, there is a municipality that is urgently calling for help and visibility from the National and departmental Government.
It is Bolívar, Valle, a municipality with 16,000 inhabitants that already reports more than 8,000 people affected and several collapsed structures.
‘The magnitude has not been determined’
In an interview with the news program Primer Plano de EL TIEMPO, Julián Muriel Andrade, mayor of Bolívar, has said that the aid received so far is scarce.
The mayor assured this newspaper that due to the remoteness of some homes in rural areas, the extent of the damage has not been determined: “We are just now receiving information from the rural area where we have not been able to reach due to the distance. We are a very large municipality, very dispersed rurally.”
According to the preliminary report given by Mayor Muriel, there are more than 1,600 affected homes, of which 600 are already completely uninhabitable. In addition, the main hospital, the health post in the corregimiento of La Tulia, and more than 80 percent of the infrastructure of the educational centers are affected.
The municipality also presents landslides and blockages on tertiary roads: “There are connectivity problems with the corregimientos and the high area of the municipality.”
He assured that one of the main damages was a pipe that provides water to 6 municipalities: “In the municipality, we have the Sara Brut reservoir, which is the regional aqueduct for 6 municipalities in the north of Valle, and with the earthquake, the pipe that distributes the reservoir water broke. 200,000 people from northern Valle del Cauca have been without this vital liquid due to this break. The road was left in terrible condition; our work from the beginning was to organize it to be able to fix that pipe, and water is about to reach the inhabitants.”
‘There is a shortage of food’
Mayor Muriel also assured that the aid received has not been enough to address all the damages.
“We are above 8,000 affected people from Bolívar. We have started to receive aid, but it has been very little. There has been a lack of visibility regarding the damages,” said the mayor.
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He also issued an alert about the little visibility given to these peripheral areas that were also severely affected by the earthquake.
In the municipality, there is a collection center, and the Mayor’s Office is receiving donations of groceries, non-perishable food, health kits, mattresses, blankets, tarps, tents.
“Food is already starting to run out. It is a tragedy what we are going through,” concluded Julián Muriel.
INVESTIGATIVE UNIT
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