At least 69,000 families have been affected and 22 people have died in flooding triggered by extraordinarily heavy rains in northern Colombia. The Church has been working since the beginning of the crisis to deliver food and clothing to people who have lost everything, as well as to provide spiritual and emotional support.
About 9,000 homes were destroyed by the flooding of the Sinú, San Jorge and Canaletes rivers over the past week.
Colombian authorities said the amount of rain expected for an entire month fell in a single day.
“We have been visiting people throughout the diocese,” Fr Elkin Arenas Torres, head of the Social Pastoral Ministry of the Diocese of Montelíbano, told Crux. “We find families completely isolated by water, with nothing to eat.”
“NGOs and government agencies have been very active…that will come to an end at some point,” Arenas said, noting how some city governments have already announced they are running out of supplies.
