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Venezuela: Pervasive poverty compounds human disaster from floods and
mudslides
By Jerry White
21 December 1999
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Tens of thousands of people are feared dead from the torrential rains,
flash floods and mudslides that have devastated Venezuela's Caribbean
coast over the past week, government officials said Monday. In one of
the worst disasters to hit South America this century, entire towns have
been buried beneath tons of rubble and earth, and the total number of
victims may never be known.
Air Force physician Augustin Martinez, who was working at Venezuela's
main airport outside the capital as part of a military rescue operation,
said armed forces officials have estimated that as many as 30,000 people
may have died. This would make it the country's worst ever natural
disaster, and surpass the estimated 10,000 people killed in Central
America by Hurricane Mitch in 1998. The mayor of La Guaira told the
country's leading newspaper that 25,000 could be dead in the port city
alone.
An estimated 150,000 to 200,000 people were made homeless by the floods
that affected Venezuela's entire northern coast, stretching from the
tourist resort of Margarita Island to the western Zulia state bordering
Colombia. The government has collected more than 1,000 bodies and
thousands more are missing. The hardest hit region was Vargas, just
north of the capital Caracas, where unseasonal heavy rains have lasted
for 10 days.
Many of the victims were poor people who built makeshift homes of tin,
wood and cinderblock at the foot of Mt. Avila. With a staggering 80
percent of the population living below the poverty level, millions of
Venezuelans from the countryside settle near urban centers in
shantytowns constructed on mudslide-prone hillsides and ravines.
The steady rains turned the normally calm mountain streams on the El
Avila range into raging torrents. By the time the churning rivers
reached the slums on the lower mountain flanks, they had turned into a
tidal wave of mud. The mud, trees and other debris poured down these
slopes, stripped by local residents of natural vegetation that prevents
erosion, and took houses, people and animals along with them. In some
lower-lying areas, slums that had grown up along the banks of rivers and
streams for easy access to water were obliterated when waterways burst
their banks.
Vargas, an industrial and tourist state with a population of 350,000,
was buried under yards of mud, boulders and rubble. According to one
army spokesman, the death toll is likely to be 1,000 in the coastal
state alone. Authorities said Vargas would have to be evacuated and
razed to the ground.
In the plush resort of Caraballeda, one of the worst-hit places in
Vargas, eyewitnesses as recently as Saturday spoke of corpses still
uncollected and sticking out from the hardening mud. On a golf course,
10,000 survivors are waiting to be evacuated. Eighteen doctors attending
them have been working for five days without a break, and the grim task
of dealing with large numbers of rapidly decomposing bodies is now
threatening to overwhelm the authorities.
Shantytowns in and around the capital city of Caracas were also
devastated. In the overflowing southern cemetery in Caracas soldiers
were helping dig a mass grave yesterday with capacity for 1,500. So far
85 bodies, in an advanced state of decay, have been buried there, but no
one knows how many more to expect. The cemetery's gates were covered
with photos of the dead so that relatives might identify them.
Most towns along the coast were virtually deserted Monday, evacuated to
reduce the growing epidemic risk caused by blocked drains, lack of
running water and rotting corpses.
One victim, Marta Iriarte de Salvatierra, 46, said her family's shack
was swept away by an avalanche of water, mud and boulders. She said they
grabbed what belongings they could and fled to the nearest structure
still standing—a luxury apartment building near the beach. The family
spent two nights in one apartment, amazed by its opulence, and ate the
food in the refrigerator. They were rescued on Sunday and were waiting
to be bused to an inland city.
President Hugo Chavez, a former army paratrooper, said late on Sunday he
would order home thousands of troops to free up space in military
barracks for the homeless. He also called on wealthy Venezuelans to
"adopt a family for Christmas." At the same time, the President, who won
election last year by making a demagogic appeal to the country's poor,
imposed a dawn to dusk curfew and dispatched members of his heavily
armed paratroopers' unit to control widespread looting along the coast.
The Government warned on Sunday that it would take "the necessary
measures" to restore public order. Chavez also suggested that the
disaster could be an opportunity to move people from the crowded
shantytowns in the capital region into the interior of the country.
International aid is being sent to Venezuela. Cuba sent eight tons of
medical supplies and other equipment, along with 200 medical personnel.
Mexico contributed two Boeing 727s and two Hercules transport planes
along with 220 soldiers and disaster relief experts. The US, which
receives most of Venezuela's exported oil, sent only token aid,
including some airplanes and helicopters. This is particularly insulting
given that the US is providing millions of dollars in military aid for
counter-insurgency operations in neighboring Colombia.
The devastating floods and mudslides are the latest blow to Venezuela,
which is suffering from the worst recession in recent history.
Economists estimate that about $3.6 billion has left the country since
Chavez was elected. The country's nearly $30 billion debt is the fourth
largest in Latin America, consuming fully 40 percent of the national
budget.
Over the past year nearly 600,000 jobs have been lost, pushing the
official unemployment rate to 15 percent and forcing increasing numbers
of people to seek jobs in the underground economy, which now employs
about half of the nation's work force.
 
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