Alausí (Ecuador) (EFE) indignation, because there were alerts that the disaster could happen.
Declared a magical town in 2019, Alausí, the city of five heritage sites: railway, natural, cultural, archaeological, architectural and immaterial religious, now mourns its dead and digs against the clock among thousands of tons of earth in search of its neighbors.
The people look like small dots perched on the tons of earth that fell from the hill, taking trees and houses in their wake, and covering large areas of surface to the point of disappearing structures, the location of which the neighbors talk about while pointing to the tons of earth : “Here was the stadium”.
A six-story building at the foot of the avalanche looks like a small Lego piece given the magnitude of the landslide, which has left a gigantic scar of earth next to the green mountains that surround Alausí.
There are also other houses, some half-covered by the earth that came down from the hill and others threatened by that mass of land, in whose bowels it is still unknown how many people are buried, since it is not known how many abandoned their homes before fearing a disaster .
Between resignation and hope
Others did not have the same luck. More than thirty hours after the avalanche, Saúl Naula still had hope of finding his relatives alive.
“We are waiting for my brother-in-law, my brother-in-law’s daughter and two little girls, who are buried. We have been here since yesterday but nothing has been achieved,” Naula told EFE in a disaster area where, on Tuesday, the use of machinery to remove the earth has been added to the shovels and picks.
With more resignation than hope, Naula followed the work of the relief teams: “Let’s hope that now we can find them to bury them as they deserve. Thanks to the machine that is helping in the search, we hope to find them, ”she said in the morning.
But his hope was cut short in the afternoon, after rescuers found the body of one of the girls.
In the absence of rescue teams in the early hours of this Tuesday, neighbors acted on their own to search for their loved ones with a pick and shovel, until later the rescuers joined.
Other neighbors watched from the terrace of a three-story house next to which the avalanche passed and some more did the same from a distant bridge in the hope that they would rescue their relatives, friends or neighbors.
Rescuers work with backhoes in two specific places while in others the search continues with pickaxes, shovels working against time and with their eyes fixed on the hill for fear that the earth will continue to fall away.
casualties and damage
According to the Risk Management Secretariat, until Tuesday there were also 67 missing and 31 injured, while 32 people could be rescued alive in the moments after the disaster.
As victims there are 116 people corresponding to 30 families that are housed in temporary shelters set up in this municipality of the Andean province of Chimborazo, while the affected people amount to about 500.
There are also 163 houses affected and the number of buildings destroyed is still under evaluation, since many of them are under several meters and thousands of tons of earth, after part of the mountain fell.
The avalanche has also affected the old railway line that crosses the area and which, among its nearby destinations, has the so-called Devil’s Nose, one of the most extreme and emblematic railway crossings in South America.
The inhabitants of the area continue to take out their household belongings to get away from the place of danger and take refuge, in some cases, in the shelters established by the authorities, while other city councils have begun to receive donations for the victims.
there were notices
In the midst of the pain and tragedy, the residents have expressed their indignation because they had warned of problems in the soil and even recently held a demonstration to demand action from the authorities.
The population unleashed their indignation against the president, Guillermo Lasso, who visited Alausí on Monday, from where he left amid citizen demands and the announcement of more support.
Videos from before the tragedy are circulating on social networks in which large and deep cracks can be seen on a road in the area, which were clearly visible even in planted areas of the place, which gave indications that the enormous landslide was going to happen.
The National Risk Secretariat claims to have sent the governor of the province of Chimborazo and the mayor of Alausí a technical report on March 11 that recommended and requested the evacuation of the population, among other measures.
On the same day as the tragedy, local authorities had made a tour in the morning to inspect the state of the cracks and alert the residents of the potential danger… that surprised them at night.
